Nature inspires self-assembling helical polymer

They performed on October 24th in ” applied chemistry.

Corresponding author Professor Takeharu Haino said: “Motivated by the elegant biological spiral structure, people have invested a lot of effort in developing artificial spiral tissues with clear handedness to achieve a wide range of potential applications, including memory and sensing devices. , Chiral Stationary Phase, Asymmetric Catalysts and Spin Filtration “The helical supramolecular polymer proposed here is a new type of helical polymer. “

Polymers are a broad class of materials characterized by the macromolecules that make them up. They occur in nature in the form of proteins, including DNA, and play a role in many industries, including as synthetic components of plastics. The molecules of supramolecular polymers often interact to form non-covalent bonds that are highly directional and induce specific behaviors depending on their arrangement. The polymer developed by the Hiroshima University team is called a pseudopolyolefin and contains mechanical bonds in addition to non-covalent bonds. Mechanical bonds can be broken by force without destroying the chemical structure of non-covalent bonds, which is an attractive property when developing materials that require precise control.

Typically, such helical structures are classified as “one-handed,” meaning they twist in only one direction. Therefore, the way they interact with other materials depends on the direction in which they are twisted. Suffice it to say, if researchers can control whether the twist is left-handed or right-handed, then researchers can control how the polymer behaves in different scenarios.

“Helical polymers may be useful for a variety of purposes; however, the synthesis of helical polymers with preferred handedness remains challenging,” Haino said. “Here, we present a new method for the synthesis of helical polymers with preferred handedness via supramolecular polymerization controlled by complementary dimerization of bis-porphyrin cleft units.”

Bisoporphyrin cleavage units are molecular components that can combine with other components to form molecular complexes, including polymers. By strategically inducing the joining (dimerization) of these units, the researchers can predetermine the handedness of the resulting polymer.

“The proposed new strategy for controlling the handedness of supramolecular helical pseudopolyalkene polymers paves the way for the study of supramolecular polymer materials with controlled helicity and mechanical bonding capabilities,” said Heino. “We The goal is to apply these new helical supramolecular polymers to materials separation and catalysis – or accelerate chemical reactions – and to create new functional chemistries of helical supramolecular polymers.”