Rapid and quantitative one-pot synthesis of sequence-controlled polymers by radical polymerization

A long-standing challenge in polymer chemistry has been to prepare synthetic polymers with not only well-defined molecular weight, but also precisely controlled microstructure in terms of the distribution of monomeric units along the chain. Here we describe a simple and scalable method that enables...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications Vol. 4; no. 1; p. 2505
Main Authors: Gody, Guillaume, Maschmeyer, Thomas, Zetterlund, Per B., Perrier, Sébastien
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 30.09.2013
Nature Publishing Group
Subjects:
639/638/455/941
Acrylamides - chemistry
Biomimetic Materials - chemical synthesis
Biomimetic Materials - chemistry
Humanities and Social Sciences
Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy
Molecular Structure
Molecular Weight
Morpholines - chemistry
multidisciplinary
Nucleic Acids - chemistry
Polymerization
Polymers
Polymers - chemistry
Proteins - chemistry
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
ISSN:2041-1723, 2041-1723
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:A long-standing challenge in polymer chemistry has been to prepare synthetic polymers with not only well-defined molecular weight, but also precisely controlled microstructure in terms of the distribution of monomeric units along the chain. Here we describe a simple and scalable method that enables the synthesis of sequence-controlled multiblock copolymers with precisely defined high-order structures, covering a wide range of functional groups. We develop a one-pot, multistep sequential polymerization process with yields >99%, giving access to a wide range of such multifunctional multiblock copolymers. To illustrate the enormous potential of this approach, we describe the synthesis of a dodecablock copolymer, a functional hexablock copolymer and an icosablock (20 blocks) copolymer, which represents the largest number of blocks seen to date, all of very narrow molecular weight distribution for such complex structures. We believe this approach paves the way to the design and synthesis of a new generation of synthetic polymers. Sequence control of multiblock copolymers is a difficult task for polymer chemistry. Here the authors report a simple radical method that allows the synthesis of well-defined block copolymers with a wide range of functional groups, including a 20-unit multiblock copolymer.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
content type line 14
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/ncomms3505