Antimicrobial materials are becoming more and more important, as antibiotic resistance is on the rise. Much of the research in this area is focused on antimicrobial peptides, where it has been demonstrated that multiple factors, like peptide length, hydrophobicity and sequence of amino acids all strongly impact the antimicrobial activity of the peptide. With the development of controlled radical polymerization techniques, which provide excellent control over dispersity and sequence, polymer chemists now have the ability to synthesize multiblock copolymers with good precision. This opens up the opportunity to use lessons learned from the peptide literature, to synthesize multiblock copolymers for antimicrobial applications. In this presentation, the synthesis of sequence controlled polymers by photoinduced atom transfer radical polymerization, and the effects of sequence, defects, and degree of polymerization on the antimicrobial properties will be discussed in detail.

Importance of sequence, degree of polymerization, and defects in antimicrobial polymers

2019 Spring National Meeting

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