Visualization and design of the functional group distribution during statistical copolymerization.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 31409782.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-019-11368-6 and PMC identifier 6692376.
- 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
Even though functional copolymers with a low percentage of functional comonomer units (up to 20 mol%) are widely used, for instance for the development of polymer therapeutics and hydrogels, insights in the functional group distribution over the actual chains are lacking and the average composition is conventionally used to describe the functionalization degree. Here we report the visualization of the monomer distribution over the different polymer chains by a synergetic combination of experimental and theoretical analysis aiming at the construction of functionality-chain length distributions (FUNC-CLDs). A successful design of the chemical structure of the comonomer pair, the initial functional comonomer amount (13 mol%), and the temperature (100 °C) is performed to tune the FUNC-CLD of copoly(2-oxazoline)s toward high functionalization degree for both low (100) and high (400) target degrees of polymerization. The proposed research strategy is generic and extendable to a broad range of copolymerization chemistries, including reversible deactivation radical polymerization.