Polymer-Chain Encoding: Synthesis of Highly Complex Monomer Sequence Patterns by Using Automated Protocols†
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement no. 258593. The CNRS, the University of Strasbourg, and the International Center for Frontier Research in Chemistry (icFRC) are also acknowledged for financial support. We thank Mélanie Legros, Odile Gavat, and Catherine Foussat (ICS, Strasbourg) for the SEC measurements, Laurence Oswald (ICS, Strasbourg) for the synthesis of TIPS-PMI, Michael Schneider and Hicham Ben Youcef (Chemspeed technologies) for fruitful discussions as well as Ryohei Kakuchi and Patrick Theato (University of Hamburg) for the gift of 4-maleimidobenzoic acid, the precursor for the synthesis of PFP-MI.
Graphical Abstract
The automated sequence-controlled copolymerization of styrene and N-substituted maleimides allowed the production of unprecedented polymer microstructures (up to 65536 possible microstructural arrangements). Highly complex monomer sequence patterns were prepared using four N-substituted maleimides (see picture).
