Single chain self-assembly of well-defined heterotelechelic polymers generated by ATRP and click chemistry revisited
(2566–2576)Journal of Polymer Science Part A: Polymer  Chemistry 49 #12 (2011)
Altintas, Rudolph and Kowollik of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany,  prepared well-defined heterotelechelic poly(styrene) carrying thymine/diaminopyridine (DAP) (Mn,SEC = 9300, PDI = 1.04) and Hamilton wedge (HW)/cyanuric acid (CA) (Mn,SEC = 8200, PDI = 1.04) bonding motifs via a combination of controlled/living radical polymerization and copper catalyzed azide/alkyne “click” chemistry and are subsequently self-assembled as single chains to emulate—on a simple level—the self-folding behavior of natural biomacromolecules.  Hydrogen nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR) in deuterated dichloromethane and dynamic light scattering analyses provides evidence for the hydrogen bonding interactions between the α-thymine and ω-DAP as well as α-CA and ω-HW chain ends of the heterotelechelic polymers leading to circular entropy driven single chain self-assembly.  (RDC 5/24/2011).