The development of nanostructured ‘smart’ materials that can respond to external stimuli on practical time scales and moderate conditions remains a challenge and is a topic of great academic and industrial interest. This presentation will demonstrate the synthesis and characterization of a new class of low molecular weight atactic sugar-polyolefin hybrid conjugates that can meet this challenge. These amphiphilic hybrid conjugates consist of hydrophobic end-group-functionalized poly(alpha-olefinate) (xPAO)  “tails” chemically tethered to hydrophilic saccharide “head” groups and display organized nanostructures within ultra-thin films with sub-10 nm features. We previously reported that the conjugate consisting of the disaccharide (D)-(+)-Cellobiose as the head group and atactic polypropylene (aPP) as the tail (CB-aPP) undergoes a unique reorientation of self-assembled domains upon thermal annealing at physiological temperatures. Herein we report the expansion of this system to conjugates consisting of both mono- and disaccharide head groups and tails consisting of aPP with various chain lengths. These conjugates display unique dynamic self-assembly behavior in the form of multiple ‘order-to-order’ phase transitions within ultra-thin films, which were investigated by GISAXS with a synchrotron x-ray source as a function of temperature. These results demonstrate the utility of sugar-polyolefin conjugates as nanostructured smart materials for nanotechnological applications.

Fabrication and characterization of ultra-thin films of thermoresponsive, nanostructured sugar-polyolefin amphiphilic conjugates

255th National Meeting (2018)

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