Supramolecular Polymerization from Controllable Fabrication to Living Polymerization

Abstract

Supramolecular polymers have attracted plenty of interest in the scientific community; however, developing controllable methods of supramolecular polymerization remains a serious challenge. This article reviews some recent developments of methods for supramolecular polymerization from controllable fabrication to living polymerization. Three facile methods with general applicability for controllable fabrication of supramolecular polymers have been established recently: the first method is a self-sorting approach by manipulating ring-chain equilibrium based on noncovalent control over rigidity of monomers; the second is covalent polymerization from supramonomers formed by noncovalent interactions; and the third is supramolecular interfacial polymerization. More excitingly, living supramolecular polymerization has been achieved by two elegant strategies, including seeded supramolecular polymerization under pathway complexity control and chain-growth supramolecular polymerization by metastable monomers. It is anticipated that this review may provide some guidance for precise fabrication of supramolecular polymers, leading to the construction of supramolecular polymeric materials with controllable architectures and functions.

Long‐Chain Hyperbranched Polymers: Synthesis, Properties, and Applications

“…Moreover, the subchains capable of designing the length, tuning the amphiphilicity, and incorporating various functional moieties provide this kind of LCHBP a much broader range of promising functions such as stimuli‐responsiveness. Note that the utilization of supramolecular approach with dynamically reversible feature to construct LCHBPs may also award some unique or additional properties, which deserves a lot more attention than it has received, since it has been widely applied in obtaining various linear and other complex functional polymer materials …”

Controlled Thermoreversible Formation of Supramolecular Hydrogels Based on Poly(vinyl alcohol) and Natural Phenolic Compounds

“…Supramolecular materials based on noncovalent bonds have attracted considerable attention in several fields due to their special characteristics such as self‐healing, shape memory, and stimuli‐responsive properties among others . Indeed, multiple hydrogen bonding are ideal reversible noncovalent interactions for preparing supramolecular networks combining high strength and excellent reversibility …”

Synthesis and Characterization of Linear Polyisoprene Supramolecular Elastomers Based on Quadruple Hydrogen Bonding

“…They have potential applications in many fields, such as self-healing materials [3,4], degradable drug nanocarriers [5,6], heterogeneous catalysis [7,8], molecular muscles [9,10], and stimuli-responsive supramolecular gels [11,12]. Among them, supramolecular elastomers, which require good processing properties at elevated temperatures, attracted great attention worldwide [13,14].…”