Consequences of chirality on the dynamics of a water-soluble supramolecular polymer.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 25698667.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms7234 and PMC identifier 4346625.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The rational design of supramolecular polymers in water is imperative for their widespread use, but the design principles for these systems are not well understood. Herein, we employ a multi-scale (spatial and temporal) approach to differentiate two analogous water-soluble supramolecular polymers: one with and one without a stereogenic methyl. Initially aiming simply to understand the molecular behaviour of these systems in water, we find that while the fibres may look identical, the introduction of homochirality imparts a higher level of internal order to the supramolecular polymer. Although this increased order does not seem to affect the basic dimensions of the supramolecular fibres, the equilibrium dynamics of the polymers differ by almost an order of magnitude. This report represents the first observation of a structure/property relationship with regard to equilibrium dynamics in water-soluble supramolecular polymers.