Thiol click chemistry has emerged as a prominent synthetic chemistry tool in recent years.  The value of thiol click reactions is evident by their use in a wide variety of research applications including hydrogel drug delivery, dendrimer synthesis and electroluminescent films.  Using microfluidics, we recently demonstrated the ability to fabricate thiol�ene and thiol�yne microfibers from a variety of reagent components.  A microfluidic channel with grooves in the top and bottom provided a mechanism to fabricate fibers with predetermined cross-sectional shapes (e.g. round, ribbon-shaped, double anchor), while also controlling the fiber size on the sub-micron level.  In addition to dictating the resulting fiber shapes and sizes, we modified the surface chemistry of off-stoichiometric microfibers, attaching a fluorescent probe to the surface of the fibers via a biotin-streptavidin linkage.  This work has been successfully extended by incorporating gold and silver nanoparticles into thiol�ene and thiol�yne films and microfibers to produce thiol click nanocomposites.  The nanocomposites exhibited unique optical, mechanical and SERS properties that could be tuned by varying the brush ligands functionalizing the nanoparticles, or by adjusting the nanoparticle concentration within the nanocomposites.  The work presented covers several materials science research areas and highlights several ways in which the thiol click platform can be exploited for use in numerous applications including the production of smart materials for filtration, optics, sensing and textiles.

Thiol click chemistry: A versatile tool for the production of novel materials

248th National Meeting (2014)

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