Low molecular weight gelators for organic solvents - From serendipity towards design

1 Introduction Everyone knows what a gel is, but from a scientific point of view the term gel encompasses chemically very diverse systems. Well known gel systems include, for instance, dilute solutions of polymers, proteins, and surfactants in water and organic solvents. These gel systems are important in medicine, biology, chemistry, and physics, and find many applications in the photographic, cosmetics, food, and petroleum industries