Metallo-supramolecular cyclic polymers.
Cyclic brush polymers represent an exciting new macromolecular topology. For the first time, this new topology has been combined with metallo-supramolecular interactions to construct novel cyclic brush polymers. Here, ring-expansion metathesis polymerization was used to synthesize a universal cyclic template with a polynorbornene backbone, which was further modified with the metal-chelating synthon terpyridine. The terpyridine side chains served as the key supramolecular unit for the creation of cyclic polymer brushes and gels. This metallo-supramolecular functionality allowed direct visualization of the cyclic brush polymers by transmission electron microscopy for the first time. This demonstration should open a new area in which supramolecular interactions are used to build an array of novel cyclic brush copolymers as well as other cyclic-polymer-based architectures generating new materials.
Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, University of Massachusetts , Amherst, Massachusetts 01003, United States.
Ke
K
Zhang
Yongping
Y
Zha
Bo
B
Peng
Yongming
Y
Chen
Gregory N
GN
Tew