Engineering Polymer Structure and Dispersity to Access Designer Materials with Exquisite Properties

We recently reported a versatile and scalable approach to access a library of monodisperse oligomers from a wide range of monomer families.¹ Such monodisperse materials have allowed mixtures with tailored dispersity to be prepared and their properties examined with unprecedented accuracy. In one study, a class of conjugated oligomer was separated into a library of discrete species, each with distinct optoelectronic properties. Upon mixing these discrete species, a series of artificially polydisperse samples having similar average number of molecular weight were found to give remarkably different fluorescence (Figure 1). In another study, we examined the effect of block dispersity on the self-assembly behavior of short block copolymer. In contrast to the disordered state of the polydisperse sample, the monodisperse sample formed an ordered assembly with a feature size of < 10 nm. Such findings reinforced the importance of dispersity for designing next-generation polymeric materials.

1. Lawrence, J.; Lee, S.-H.; Abdilla, A.; Nothling, M. D.; Ren, J. M.; Knight, A. S.; Fleischmann, C.; Li, Y.; Abrams, A. S.; Schmidt, B. V. K. J.; et al. A Versatile and Scalable Strategy to Discrete Oligomers. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2016, 138, 6306–6310.