Final Report Summary - SEQUENCES (New Strategies for Controlling Polymer Sequences)
The aim of the project SEQUENCES was to identify new methods for controlling monomer sequences in synthetic polymerizations. Monomer sequence regulation plays a key role in Nature. Indeed, the unique properties of biopolymers such as nucleic acids and proteins strongly depend on their ordered primary structures. By analogy, one may predict that synthetic sequence-defined polymers could play an important role in manmade materials and technologies. However, prior to this project, there was very little research dedicated to the synthesis of non-biological sequence-defined polymers. Thus, within the framework of this ERC project, methods for controlling comonomer sequences in chain-growth, step-growth and multistep-growth polymerizations have been studied. Very interesting results have been obtained in chain-growth polymerizations, in particular in controlled radical copolymerization processes. For instance, a wide variety of functional sequence-controlled copolymers has been prepared by sequence-controlled copolymerization of donor and acceptor comonomers. For example, sequence-controlled water-soluble polymers (e.g. polyanions, polycations, PEGylated polymers), semi-crystalline polymers, bio-hybrid macromolecules (e.g. polymer-peptide hybrids, glycopolymers) and complex topological macromolecules have been developed in this project. In all cases, it was shown that comonomer sequence regulation permits to control finely the microscopic or macroscopic properties of the polymers formed. Hence, the findings of the project SEQUENCES open up brand new avenues for the design of tailor-made polymer materials. Besides chain-growth polymerizations, very interesting progress has been made in multistep growth polymerizations (i.e. strategies, in which monomers are attached one-by-one to a support). In this case, efficient chemoselective approaches have been discovered within the frame of this project. These novel methodologies allow straightforward synthesis of perfectly monodisperse sequence-defined macromolecules. Moreover, new properties have been identified for these polymers. In particular, it was shown in this project that synthetic polymers may store monomer-encoded information.