Amylose, which is a linear natural polysaccharide, plays a host compound that forms inclusion complexes with relatively lower molecular weight guest compounds. However, little has been reported regarding the formation of inclusion complexes between amylose and polymeric compounds. The main difficulty in the complexation of amylose with polymeric guests is owing to that the driving force for the binding is only caused by hydrophobic interactions. Amylose, therefore, does not have sufficient ability to include the long polymeric chains. The author has developed a new method of the polymerization system for the formation of well-defined amylose supramolecules, that is, amylose–polymer inclusion complexes. The method was achieved by the phosphorylase-catalyzed enzymatic polymerization of α-D-glucose 1-phosphate monomer from maltoheptaose primer to produce amylose in the presence of hydrophobic synthetic guest polymers. Because the image of this polymerization system is the similar as the way that the vines of a plant grow twining around a rod, it has been named ‘vine-twining polymerization’ (Figure 1). By means of this method, we have prepared hierarchically controlled supramolecular network materials.<br/>For example, the author performed the preparation of supramolecular network materials by the vine-twining polymerization using poly(γ-glutamic acid-<i>graft</i>-ε-caprolactone) as a new guest polymer. A supramolecular network hydrogel was obtained with the progress of the vine-twining polymerization. Macroscopic interfacial healing was achieved by the formation of inclusion complexes at interface between two hydrogel pieces through the enzymatic polymerization. A porous cryogel was further obtained by lyophilization of a hydrogel. Ion gels were also fabricated by soaking the hydrogels in an ionic liquid, 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride.

Preparation of amylose supramolecular materials by vine-twining polymerization

251st National Meeting (2016)

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