Polymers articles within Nature Chemistry

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Radical polymerizations yield polymers that cannot easily be degraded. The co-polymerization of cyclobutene-based monomers with conventional vinyl monomers has now been shown to result in co-polymers with cyclobutane mechanophores in their backbone, which facilitate on-demand degradation through a combination of mechanical activation and hydrolysis. This approach offers a promising avenue for the degradation of all-carbon-bond-backbone polymers.

    • Peng Liu
    • , Sètuhn Jimaja
    •  & Nico Bruns

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Although hydrogels with complex, heterogeneous and reconfigurable structures are promising materials for use in intelligent systems, fabricating such hydrogels is challenging. Now it has been shown that they can be fabricated by reversibly gluing different hydrogel units using a photocontrolled metallopolymer adhesive. This method can be used to design hydrogels with customized functions.

    • Jiahui Liu
    • , Yun-Shuai Huang
    •  & Si Wu

  • Article |

    Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) have remained difficult to grow as single crystals. Now, amphiphilic amino-acid derivatives that assemble in micelles in aqueous solutions have been shown to promote the growth of a variety of imine-bridged COFs into single crystals, in a step-by-step fashion, within their hydrophobic compartment.

    • Zhipeng Zhou
    • , Lei Zhang
    •  & Zhikun Zheng

  • Article |

    Inverse vulcanization (IV) generates sulfur-rich functional polymers from elemental sulfur and organic crosslinkers, but the harsh reaction conditions required limit the scope of suitable crosslinkers. Now, a photoinduced IV has been shown to proceed at ambient temperatures, enabling the use of volatile and gaseous alkenes and alkynes as crosslinkers and broadening the range of products.

    • Jinhong Jia
    • , Jingjiang Liu
    •  & Zheng-Jun Quan

  • Article |

    The biochemical roles and mechanisms of multiphase membraneless organelles are not yet well understood. Now, multiphase peptide droplets have been shown to sort RNA based on whether it is single- or double-stranded, as well as impact RNA duplexation through in-droplet thermodynamic equilibria. This work provides insight into possible primitive mechanisms for multicompartment intracellular condensates and can aid in the design of functional artificial membraneless organelles.

    • Saehyun Choi
    • , McCauley O. Meyer
    •  & Christine D. Keating

  • Article |

    Depolymerizable polymers can potentially address challenges in polymer sustainability, but most existing systems lack the useful thermomechanical properties of traditional ones. Now, it has been shown that depolymerizable polymers based on olefin metathesis show good thermal stability as well as versatile mechanical properties and that the monomers used to make them can be prepared from abundant materials.

    • Devavrat Sathe
    • , Junfeng Zhou
    •  & Junpeng Wang

  • News & Views |

    It is crucial to replace fossil fuel-based plastics with biodegradable ones that are made from renewable sources. Now, a new generation of bioplastics has been prepared through the stereoselective polymerization of diastereomeric monomers — a synthetic approach that allows tuning of the materials’ toughness, ductility and melting point.

    • Sonja Herres-Pawlis

  • Article |

    It is difficult to prepare 2D polymers that are crystalline over large areas. Now, few-layer 2D polyimides and polyamides with good crystallinity on the micrometre scale have been synthesized on a water surface. A surfactant monolayer is used to organize amine monomers before their polymerization with anhydride moieties.

    • Kejun Liu
    • , Haoyuan Qi
    •  & Xinliang Feng

  • News & Views |

    Maleimide–thiol adducts are popular in both bioconjugation and materials chemistry, however, they are unstable under physiological conditions. Now, a mechanochemical approach uses pulling forces to stabilize maleimide–thiol adducts and improve the stability of polymer–protein conjugates.

    • Cody J. Higginson
    •  & Phillip B. Messersmith

  • Article |

    A scalable, one-pot, solution-based protocol for the controlled synthesis of uniform non-spherical block copolymer micelles is a desirable but challenging target. Now, a polymerization-induced crystallization-driven self-assembly process has been developed that offers facile access to 1D and platelet micelle morphologies and to near monodisperse cylinders of controlled length.

    • Charlotte E. Boott
    • , Jessica Gwyther
    •  & Ian Manners

  • Article |

    Reversibly inducing solid-to-liquid transitions of polymers at room temperature represents a challenge for enhanced processability and applications of polymers. Now, three azopolymers have been shown to exhibit photoswitchable glass transition temperatures, resulting in reversible solid-to-liquid transitions. Light exposure can heal cracks in hard azopolymers, reduce surface roughness of azopolymer films and control azopolymer adhesion.

    • Hongwei Zhou
    • , Changguo Xue
    •  & Si Wu

  • Article |

    Polymers that are both elastic and self-healing are desirable for a variety of applications, but often rely on hydrogen bonding which makes them moisture-sensitive. Now, by incorporating metal–ligand interactions with different bond strengths into flexible polymer backbones, an elastomer has been devised that combines high stretchability and high dielectric strength with autonomous self-healing and mechanical actuation capabilities.

    • Cheng-Hui Li
    • , Chao Wang
    •  & Zhenan Bao

  • Article |

    Macromolecular functionalization and linking are often facilitated by using ‘click’ chemistries. Now, triazolinediones have been used in ultrafast click reactions under additive-free, ambient conditions for polymer conjugation. Clicking to indoles gives an adduct that is dynamic at elevated temperatures, which produces properties such as polymer-network healing, reshaping and recycling.

    • Stijn Billiet
    • , Kevin De Bruycker
    •  & Filip E. Du Prez

  • News & Views |

    The development of methods for efficiently using carbon dioxide in synthesis would enable chemists to tap into this abundant resource. Now, an indirect route to the copolymerization of alkenes with carbon dioxide shows how this greenhouse gas may prove useful in the search for new 'green' materials.

    • Andrew P. Dove

  • News & Views |

    The amount of uranium in seawater vastly exceeds that in land-based deposits; but separating it from other more abundant metal ions requires high affinity, selectivity — and the ability to deal with an enormous volume of water. Now, two complementary approaches have made considerable contributions to overcoming these challenges.

    • Yi Lu

  • Article |

    Polymers that exhibit a mechanical response to external stimuli are technologically important. Here, a polymer is described that shows a very large negative thermal expansion on heating or irradiation with near-infrared light. This property is stable over hundreds of cycles and is shown to be driven by a conformational change of an s-dibenzocyclooctadiene unit within the polymer structure.

    • Xingyuan Shen
    • , Christopher Viney
    •  & Jennifer Q. Lu

  • Article |

    Bistable materials, which exist in either one of two phases under identical conditions, are intriguing both from a fundamental perspective and for their practical applications. A cyanide-bridged [CoFe] coordination chain has now been prepared that shows both magnetic and electric bistabilities in the same temperature range, undergoing thermo- and photo-induced conversions between insulating, semiconducting and single-chain magnet-type phases.

    • Norihisa Hoshino
    • , Fumichika Iijima
    •  & Hiroki Oshio

  • Article |

    A supramolecular system has been assembled that moves autonomously in the presence of a molecular fuel. Platinum nanoparticles entrapped in a polymer stomatocyte — a bowl-shaped polymer vesicle — catalyse the decomposition of the molecular fuel, hydrogen peroxide. The resulting generation of water and oxygen induces a directional movement of the stomatocyte.

    • Daniela A. Wilson
    • , Roeland J. M. Nolte
    •  & Jan C. M. van Hest

  • News & Views |

    Metamaterials are synthetic materials tailored with unusual properties that are not found in nature. It has now been predicted that they could be engineered with negative refractive index through the use of periodic structures via bottom-up self-assembly synthesis.

    • Jackie Y. Ying

  • Research Highlights |

    A thermally induced rearrangement of a triazole that releases nitrogen gas is the key to the development of a self-extinguishing 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 |

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

    • Anne Pichon

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