Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2016 Dec 19;55(51):15873-15878. doi: 10.1002/anie.201609103. Epub 2016 Nov 17.

Supramolecular Diblock Copolymers Featuring Well-defined Telechelic Building Blocks.

Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English)

Elizabeth Elacqua, Anna Croom, Kylie B Manning, Scott K Pomarico, Diane Lye, Lauren Young, Marcus Weck

PMID: 27860190 DOI: 10.1002/anie.201609103

Abstract

We report supramolecular AB diblock copolymers comprised of well-defined telechelic building blocks. Helical motifs, formed via reversible addition-fragmentation chain-transfer (RAFT) or anionic polymerization, are assembled with coil-forming and sheet-featuring blocks obtained via atom-transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) or ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP). Interpolymer hydrogen bonding or metal-coordination achieves dynamic diblock architectures featuring hybrid topologies of coils, helices, and/or π-stacked sheets that, on a basic level, mimic protein structural motifs in fully synthetic systems. The intrinsic properties of each block (e.g., circular dichroism and fluorescence) remain unaffected in the wake of self-assembly. This strategy to develop complex synthetic polymer scaffolds from functional building blocks is significant in a field striving to produce architectures reminiscent of biosynthesis, yet fully synthetic in nature. This is the first plug-and-play approach to fabricate hybrid π-sheet/helix, π-sheet/coil, and helix/coil architectures via directional self-assembly.

© 2016 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Keywords: block copolymers; self-assembly; supramolecular chemistry; supramolecular polymers

Publication Types

• Journal Article
• Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.