Volume 43, Issue 4 2100666
Research Article

Unraveling Sequence Effect on Glass Transition Temperatures of Discrete Unconjugated Oligomers

Ruizhe Liu

Ruizhe Liu

School of Chemical Engineering, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2052 Australia

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Chao Yang

Chao Yang

College of Materials Science and Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, Hunan, 410082 P. R. China

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Zixuan Huang

Zixuan Huang

School of Chemical Engineering, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2052 Australia

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Rohan French

Rohan French

School of Chemical Engineering, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2052 Australia

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Zi Gu

Zi Gu

School of Chemical Engineering, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2052 Australia

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Jianli Cheng

Jianli Cheng

Institute of Chemical Materials, China Academy of Engineering Physics, Mianyang, Sichuan, 621900 P. R. China

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Kunkun Guo

Corresponding Author

Kunkun Guo

College of Materials Science and Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, Hunan, 410082 P. R. China

E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]

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Jiangtao Xu

Corresponding Author

Jiangtao Xu

School of Chemical Engineering, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2052 Australia

E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]

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First published: 30 November 2021
Citations: 4

Abstract

Sequence plays a critical role in enabling unique properties and functions of natural biomolecules, which has promoted the rapid advancement of synthetic sequence-defined polymers in recent decades. Particularly, investigation of short chain sequence-defined oligomers (also called discrete oligomers) on their properties has become a hot topic. However, most studies have focused on discrete oligomers with conjugated structures. In contrast, unconjugated oligomers remain relatively underexplored. In this study, three pairs of discrete oligomers with the same composition but different sequence for each pair are employed for investigating their glass transition temperatures (Tgs). The resultant Tgs of sequenced oligomers in each pair are found to be significantly different (up to 11.6 °C), attributable to variations in molecular packing as demonstrated by molecular dynamics and density function theory simulations. Intermolecular interaction is demonstrated to have less impact on Tgs than intramolecular interaction. The mechanistic investigation into two model dimers suggests that monomer sequence caused the difference in intramolecular rotational flexibility of the sequenced oligomers. In addition, despite having different monomer sequence and Tgs, the oligomers have very similar solubility parameters, which supports their potential use as effective oligomeric plasticizers to tune the Tgs of bulk polymer materials.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Data Availability Statement

Research data are not shared.

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