Nature broadly employs complementary hydrogen bonding of purine and pyrimidine rings to encode our genetic profiles. Our recent studies have demonstrated the effect of nucleobase incorporation on synthetic polymers through probing their physical crosslinking mechanisms and self-assembled morphologies. We designed acrylic nucleobase-functionalized ABC triblock thermoplastic elastomers with extended plateau regions and constant base pair melting temperature. Michael addition reactions readily provide nucleobase acrylic monomers.  The robust complementary hydrogen bonding of nucleobase shows potential in solving the paradox of enhanced mechanical strength with solvent-free processibility. Special attention is devoted to the elucidation of the thermomechanical response using a complement of dynamic mechanical analysis, melt rheology, and in situ FTIR spectroscopy as a function of temperature.  ABC triblock copolymers and complementary blends demonstrate the role of the complementary hydrogen bonding, and RAFT polymerization is a critical advance to permit the synthesis of a wide range of macromolecular architectures.  A difunctional chain transfer agent provides tailored compositions in two steps for the preparation of ABA compositions.

Nucleobase-containing block copolymer synthesis via RAFT polymerization: From actuators to thermoplastic elastomers

248th National Meeting (2014)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.