Polymer chemistry articles within Nature Chemistry

Featured

  • Article |

    Cell-laden synthetic hydrogels — formed via a copper-free click reaction between a poly(ethylene glycol) tetra-cyclooctyne and a peptide-diazide — provide a platform to investigate the cells' response to various stimuli during growth. The hydrogel's biochemical aspects are readily controlled by a thiol-ene photocoupling reaction initiated with visible light, whereas the biomechanical properties of the network are altered via a UV-mediated photodegradation.

    • Cole A. DeForest
    •  & Kristi S. Anseth

  • News & Views |

    Growing good-quality single crystals of proteins for high-resolution X-ray diffraction relies on the use of a diverse range of materials as nucleating agents. Smart hydrogels, in the form of molecularly imprinted polymers, may provide a general solution.

    • Michael J. Whitcombe

  • News & Views |

    A catalyst has been developed that enables poly(propylene carbonate) chains to be made in which the configuration of the repeat units changes gradually from exclusively S at one end of the chain to exclusively R at the other. The improved physical properties of this 'stereogradient' polymer may help its adoption as an environmentally friendly material.

    • Bun Yeoul Lee
    •  & Anish Cyriac

  • News & Views |

    Single-molecule spectroscopy allows fluctuations of conjugated polymer conformation to be monitored during solvent vapour annealing. Dramatic changes in fluorescence behaviour are observed and interpreted in terms of transformations between extended and collapsed polymer geometries.

    • Lewis Rothberg

  • Article |

    Macromolecules with antimicrobial properties are promising materials for combating multi-drug-resistant microbes. Now, it has been shown that amphiphilic cationic polycarbonates that are biodegradable can self-assemble into micellar nanoparticles that can kill gram-positive bacteria, MRSA and fungi efficiently, even at low concentrations. Moreover, no significant toxicity is observed during in vivo studies in mice.

    • Fredrik Nederberg
    • , Ying Zhang
    •  & Yi-Yan Yang

  • News & Views |

    Arranging polymers into well-defined shapes endows them with specific properties; but although it is routinely achieved in nature, accurate origami has proved challenging with synthetic polymers. A surprisingly simple folding strategy has now been described.

    • Sébastien Perrier

  • Article |

    The copper(I)-catalysed azide–alkyne cycloaddition is arguably the most prolific and powerful example of the click reaction paradigm. Here, photochemical reduction of Cu(II) allows spatial and temporal control over the reaction for small-molecule synthesis, patterning of hydrogel formation and the in situ labelling of gels, with features as small as 25 micrometres being produced.

    • Brian J. Adzima
    • , Youhua Tao
    •  & Christopher N. Bowman

  • News & Views |

    Helical macromolecules are ubiquitous in nature, and almost always adopt a one-handed conformation. Synthetic systems, in contrast, are typically obtained in racemic right- and left-handed mixtures. A helical phenylene oligomer has now been prepared that forms a non-racemic mixture on crystallization, and on oxidation locks one conformation in.

    • Eiji Yashima

  • Research Highlights |

    The use of dyes as catalyst initiators means that they are incorporated into polymer molecules, which removes the need for harsh post-dyeing treatments.

    • Neil Withers

  • Review Article |

    Most synthetic polymers are made from petroleum and their production is currently not sustainable. RAFT polymerization has emerged as a powerful technique to control the synthesis of such polymers, thus expanding further their applications. This Review discusses the sustainability of RAFT in terms of process and materials.

    • Mona Semsarilar
    •  & Sébastien Perrier

  • Research Highlights |

    The transition state of a polymer isomerization has been stabilized under sonication-induced elongation, leading to the formation of the less stable cis-isomer.

    • Anne Pichon

  • Thesis |

    It might come as a disappointment to some chemists, but just as there are uncertainties in physics and mathematics, there are some chemistry questions we may never know the answer to either, suggests Fredric M. Menger.

    • Fredric M. Menger

  • Research Highlights |

    A cationic aluminium carbonylation catalyst works in tandem with a zinc alkoxide polymerization catalyst to provide an efficient route to an important biodegradable polymer.

    • Stephen Davey

  • News & Views |

    The concept of encoding information into a synthetic polymer through its monomer sequence promises very-high-density storage, but decoding such data is a significant challenge. Now, it has been shown that small molecular tweezers can recognize different triplet sequences in oligoimides, offering a glimpse of how to read out information from polymer codes.

    • Ken D. Shimizu

  • Research Highlights |

    Imprinting recognition sites into a polymer film creates sensitive and selective protein sensors.

    • Gavin Armstrong

  • Research Highlights |

    Plastics have been prepared that can depolymerize in response to specific chemical signals.

    • Anne Pichon

  • Article |

    Monomer-sequence information in synthetic copolyimides can be recognized by tweezer-type molecules binding to adjacent triplet-sequences through complementary aromatic π–π-stacking, with different tweezer molecules showing different sequence-selectivities. Single-crystal X-ray analysis of tweezer–oligomer complexes confirms the tweezer-binding selectivity, and NMR spectroscopy reveals a new mechanism (‘frameshift-reading’) for tweezer-based sequence recognition in chain-folding copolyimides.

    • Zhixue Zhu
    • , Christine J. Cardin
    •  & Howard M. Colquhoun

  • Research Highlights |

    Phase separation in conjugated polymers has been achieved by making a thiophene–selenophene block copolymer.

    • Neil Withers

  • Article |

    Porous coordination polymers can form materials that are both crystalline and flexible, creating regular yet dynamic channels that are promising for guest sorption. Guest selectivity is difficult to achieve, however, and typically relies on size- or shape-recognition. A framework has now been assembled that combines charge-transfer interactions and structural flexibility to only accommodate O2 and NO.

    • Satoru Shimomura
    • , Masakazu Higuchi
    •  & Susumu Kitagawa

  • News & Views |

    Ultrasound can be used to control molecular processes as delicate as rotation around a single carbon–carbon bond.

    • S. Karthikeyan
    •  & Rint P. Sijbesma

  • Article |

    In analogy to classical living polymerizations, the controlled formation of highly monodisperse cylindrical micelles — ranging from approximately 200 nm to 2 µm in length — has been demonstrated using very small and uniform crystallite seeds as initiators for the crystallization-driven living self-assembly of block copolymers with a crystallizable, core-forming metalloblock.

    • Joe B. Gilroy
    • , Torben Gädt
    •  & Ian Manners

  • Article |

    Efficient conduction of protons on a micrometre scale is critical for the development of fuel cell membranes — a key component of clean energy sources. Now, self-assembling amphiphilic polymers have been shown to provide a nanoscale organization of proton-conducting functionalities that dramatically increases anhydrous proton conductivity.

    • Yangbin Chen
    • , Michael Thorn
    •  & S. Thayumanavan

  • Article |

    Porous coordination polymers — PCPs, also known as metal–organic framework materials — have been widely investigated for their useful properties, but controlling their size and shape in a nanocrystalline form is difficult. Now, a rapid method of preparing porous crystalline nanosized PCPs that uses a microemulsion system under ultrasonic irradiation has been reported.

    • Daisuke Tanaka
    • , Artur Henke
    •  & Juergen Groll

  • Research Highlights |

    The sliding movement of the actin–myosin protein conjugate responsible for contracting muscles can be inhibited using a dendrimer that glues them together.

    • Gavin Armstrong

  • Review Article |

    Rare-earth metal dialkyl complexes can be readily transformed into the corresponding cationic monoalkyl species — which have been shown to catalyse a range of (co)polymerization processes — as well as into polyhydride complexes that have unique structures and a rich reaction chemistry.

    • Masayoshi Nishiura
    •  & Zhaomin Hou

  • Research Highlights |

    Thermally stable stereoisomers can be interconverted by the application of a mechanical force using ultrasound irradiation.

    • Stephen Davey

  • News & Views |

    Monomers that contain masked ketene groups provide new opportunities for facile crosslinking and post-synthetic modification of polymers in a wide variety of materials applications.

    • Steve Rimmer

  • Research Highlights |

    Silicon-based polymers have been assembled into honeycomb films that exhibit good flexibility, stability and thermal conductivity, showing great promise for industrial applications.

    • Anne Pichon

  • News & Views |

    Yttrium-based catalysts can be used to stitch together two different lactone monomers in an alternating fashion to produce polyesters with well-defined primary structures. The ability to control the sequence of building blocks in polymers with increasing levels of precision offers new opportunities for tailoring the properties of designer synthetic macromolecules.

    • Jean-François Lutz

  • Article |

    The ability to rapidly functionalize polymers is vital for application development. Here, a method for the introduction of masked ketenes into monomers for both ring-opening metathesis and radical-type polymerizations is described. These ketenes — a group previously underexploited in polymer chemistry — allow both crosslinking and post-polymerization functionalization of the polymers.

    • Frank A. Leibfarth
    • , Minhyuk Kang
    •  & Craig J. Hawker

  • News & Views |

    Small-molecule enzyme-inhibitors often display insufficient affinity and selectivity for their targets causing unwanted side effects when used as drugs. Molecularly imprinted polymers prepared using the enzyme as a template could offer a solution.

    • Börje Sellergren

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