Branching is known to play a key role in the properties of entangled polymers. At the same time, high level of branching results in hyperbranched polymers, dendritic Cayley-tree types of polymers etc, which can also be viewed as soft colloids.  We show how to systematically attempt at bridging the interesting gap between polymers and colloids by accessing highly functionalized well-characterized polymers and exploring their properties with emphasis on dynamics and rheology. We show two examples. (i) High-molar mass star polymers with changing functionality can respond as regular entangled stars or soft colloids either in solution or in melt. In solution in particular they exhibit intriguing properties and their (ultra)softness is responsible for a variety of new metastable states and transitions at high fractions in molecular or polymeric solvents. (ii) Dendronized polymers are a reasonably new class of hyperbranched polymers, similar to bottlebrushes but each branch is a dendrimer. By varying the molar mass of the backbone and the dendrimer generation it is possible to switch from polymer-dominated to colloid-like response. In addition, other types of interaction (hydrogen bonding, pi-pi stacking) offer tunability as well as complexity. <br/>These examples demonstrate that polymer chemistry holds the premise for exploring and understanding exciting novel properties of soft matter.<br/>Work in collaboration with M. Gauthier (Waterloo), K. Matyjaszewski (Carnegie-Mellon) and A. D. Schluter (ETH Zurich).<br/>

Regular highly branched polymers: From polymeric to colloidal properties<br />

249th National Meeting (2015)

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