Our research focuses on the development of chemical strategies for the scalable synthesis of biomimetic, functional polymers using orthogonal “click” reactions. The thiol- and aza-Micheal reactions in combination present a unique platform for the rapid generation of polymers with a broad range of complex architectures, such as alternating multiblock copolymers, networks, bottle-brush polymers, linear-hyperbranched block copolymers, and combinations thereof. The wide range of commercially available primary amines, dithiols, and dienes also allows for the introduction of many functional group chemistries onto the polymer backbone, e.g. alkenes, alkynes, alcohols, hydrazines, that may undergo further reactions to incorporate a specific polymer functionality or to modulate the polymer architecture. Current work is focused on using these reaction schemes to combinatorially synthesize, with aid of a high throughput automated synthesizer, polymers with a broad range of properties for applications including: rewritable/dynamic copolymers, self-assembly, molecular recognition, and covalent adaptable networks.

Combinatorial synthesis of functional polymers with complex architectures using thiol-Michael and aza-Michael chemistries

256th National Meeting (2018)

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