Haedler, Andreas T.; Meskers, Stefan C. J.; Zha, R. Helen; Kivala, Milan; Schmidt, Hans-Werner; Meijer, E. W.
Pathway Complexity in the Enantioselective Self-Assembly of Functional Carbonyl-Bridged Triarylamine Trisamides
Functional supramolecular systems like carbonyl-bridged triarylamine (CBT) trisamides are known for their long-range energy transport at room temperature. Understanding the complex self-assembly processes of this system allows for control over generated structures using controlled supramolecular polymerization. Here, we present two novel CBT trisamides with (S)- or (R)-chiral side chains which…
End Groups of Functionalized Siloxane Oligomers Direct Block-Copolymeric or Liquid-Crystalline Self-Assembly Behavior
Zha, R. Helen; de Waal, Bas F. M.; Lutz, Martin; Teunissen, Abraham J. P.; Meijer, E. W.
Monodisperse oligodimethylsiloxanes end-functionalized with the hydrogen-bonding ureidopyrimidinone (UPy) motif undergo phase separation between their aromatic end groups and dimethylsiloxane midblocks to form ordered nanostructures with domain spacings of
Rheological Link Between Polymer Melts with a High Molecular Weight Tail and Enhanced Formation of Shish-Kebabs
Wingstrand, Sara L.; Shen, Bo; Kornfield, Julie A.; Mortensen, Kell; Parisi, Daniele; Vlassopoulos, Dimitris; Hassager, Ole
Presence of an ultra high molecular weight (UHMw) fraction in flowing polymer melts is known to facilitate formation of oriented crystalline structures significantly. The UHMw fraction manifests itself as a minor tail in the molar mass distribution and is hardly detectable in the canonical characterization methods. In this study, alternatively,…
Synthesis of supramolecular precision polymers: Crystallization under conformational constraints
Reimann, Sophie; Danke, Varun; Beiner, Mario; Binder, Wolfgang H.
Placing artificial folding elements into precision polymers is an important strategy to systematically study structure formation in self-assembly, particularly in the semicrystalline state. To this purpose, a series of precision polymers bearing either a N-protected or N-unprotected diaminopyridine (DAP) unit after every 16th, 18th, and 20th carbon as well as…
Morphology orientation of comb-like polymers with rigid backbones under the influence of shear fields
Gupta, Gaurav; Danke, Varun; Babur, Tamoor; Beiner, Mario
The influence of shear fields on the packing behavior and morphology orientation arestudied for two comb-like polymers viz. poly(1,4-phenylene-2,5-didecyloxy terephthalate) (PPDOT)and poly(2,5-didecyloxy-1,4-phenylenevinylene) (DOPPV) with different rigid backbones having C =10 alkyl carbons per side chain. Crystallographic analysis based on X-ray diffractometry measurementsshows that both PPDOT…
Foundation of the Outstanding Toughness in Biomimetic and Natural Spider Silk
Anton, Arthur Markus; Heidebrecht, Aniela; Mahmood, Nasir; Beiner, Mario; Scheibel, Thomas; Kremer, Friedrich
Spider dragline silk is distinguished through the highest toughness of all natural as well as artificial fiber materials. To unravel the toughness’s molecular foundation and to enable manufacturing biomimetic analogues, we investigated the morphological and functional structure of recombinant fibers, which exhibit toughness similar to that of the natural template,…
Stable, metastable and unstable cellulose solutions
Gubitosi, Marta; Nosrati, Pegah; Hamid, Mona Koder; Kuczera, Stefan; Behrens, Manja A.; Johansson, Eric G.; Olsson, Ulf
We have characterized the dissolution state of microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) in aqueous tetrabutylammonium hydroxide, TBAH(aq), at different concentrations of TBAH, by means of turbidity and small-angle X-ray scattering. The solubility of cellulose increases with increasing TBAH concentration, which is consistent with solubilization driven by neutralization. When comparing the two polymorphs,…
Porous Stimuli-Responsive Self-Folding Electrospun Mats for 4D Biofabrication
Apsite, Indra; Stoychev, Georgi; Zhang, Weizhong; Jehnichen, Dieter; Xie, Jin; Ionov, Leonid
We report fabrication and characterization of electrospun, porous multi-layer scaffolds based-on thermo-responsive polymers polycaprolactone (PCL) and poly(N-isopropylacrylamide). We found that the electrospun mats fold into various 3D structures in an aqueous environment at different temperatures. We could determine the mechanism behind different folding behaviors under different conditions by…
Effects of Cations on the Behaviour of Lipid Cubic Phases
Brasnett, Christopher; Longstaff, Georgia; Compton, Laura; Seddon, Annela
Inverse bicontinuous cubic structures formed by lipids have been demonstrated in a wide variety of applications, from a host matrix for proteins for crystallisation, to templates for nanoscale structures. Recent work has focused on tuning their properties to realize such applications, often by manipulating the structure by introducing other lipids…
A versatile approach to different colored photonic films generated from block copolymers and their conversion into polymer-grafted nanoplatelets
Huang, Yucheng; Zheng, Yang; Pribyl, Julia; Benicewicz, Brian C.
One-dimensional photonic crystals can be formed by the self-assembly of block copolymers. However, such materials are still difficult to make due to the synthetic challenge of making high molecular weight block copolymers and the slow self-assembly characteristics of these block copolymers to form high domain spacings (d > 150 nm).…