Synthetic polymers are usually synthesized by two main mechanisms: chain-growth and step-growth polymerizations. Although useful for large scale synthesis, both approaches lead in general to polydisperse samples, in which polymer chains have different chain-lengths. Furthermore, when different monomers are copolymerized via these mechanisms, the formed copolymers exhibit chain-to-chain composition- and sequence-deviations. This differs from biological polymerization mechanisms, in which uniform macromolecules with precisely-controlled chain-lengths, tacticity and monomer sequences are formed. Thus, over the past few decades, polymerization methods allowing a better control over macromolecular structure have been thoroughly investigated. For example, advanced chain-growth methods such as living anionic polymerizations and controlled radical polymerizations have opened up numerous opportunities for controlling the microstructure and architecture of synthetic (co)polymers. Yet, although more accurate than conventional polymerization approaches, these methods still lead to non-uniform samples. The next step in polymer chemistry is therefore the synthesis of uniform polymers with fully-controlled primary structures, as found in biology. Yet, classical methods such as chain growth and step-growth polymerizations are not valid options to synthesize such “high-precision polymers” for the simple reasons that are discussed above. The only way to do so is probably to borrow synthesis tools from other disciplines such as biology, biochemistry and organic synthesis. For example, solid-phase iterative chemistry, which was originally developped for peptide synthesis, is a tool of choice for preparing uniform synthetic polymers. In this lecture, I will highlight recent results obtained in my laboratory using such multistep growth strategies. In particular, I will discuss in details the synthesis of information-containing macromolecules; an emerging class of synthetic polymers that show promise for applications in data storage, anti-counterfeiting and traceability technologies.

Design of high-precision polymers by multistep synthesis

2019 Spring National Meeting

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