Tapered Bottlebrush Polymers: A New Polymer Architecture
Abstract:
A new polymer architecture termed tapered bottlebrush is proposed. Tapered bottlebrush polymers are derivatives of the traditional bottlebrush architecture, which consists of a backbone polymer with densely grafted side chain polymers. In the case of tapered bottlebrushes, the molecular weight of the side chain polymers will be systemically varied to yield anisotropic, cone-shaped nanostructures with side chain polymers that gradually increase in molecular weight along the length of the backbone polymer. This type of covalent, coneshaped polymer may have applications in supersoft elastomeric materials and as macromolecular, anisotropic amphiphiles. This submission deals predominantly with the synthesis of tapered bottlebrush polymers, which will be carried out using a dual polymerization approach based on ring-opening polymerization ROP and ring-opening metathesis polymerization ROMP. The fast and living nature of both ROP and ROMP will allow for rapid production of the target polymers, with conversion from monomer to tapered bottlebrush expected to be complete within an hour. ROP and ROMP were chosen due to their orthogonal chemistry in order to limit any side reactions occurring as a result of the dual polymerization strategy.