Water-soluble pillar[5]arene induced the morphology transformation of self-assembled nanostructures and had further application in paraquat detection.

Well-defined nanostructures were constructed by self-assembling hexamethylenediamine-functionalized tetrachloroperylene bisimides (compound A) in water/acetone. These structures could further reversibly transform into fluorescent vesicles by adding and removing water-soluble pillar[5]arene.