Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Materials chemistry of chiral macromolecules. 1. Synthesis and phase transitions

Journal Article · · Journal of the American Chemical Society
;  [1]
  1. Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL (United States)

This paper describes work on synthesis of chiral macromolecules as part of a materials chemistry study which seeks to establish links in these systems among molecular structure, three-dimensional molecular organization, and properties. The basic materials chemistry hypothesis driving this work is that chiral forces among stereogenic centers may serve as guiding fields to organize polymers in two or three dimensions. It follows that physical properties could be directly or indirectly controlled by chirality. In order to promote strong forces among chiral centers the chains were designed to have stereogenic carbons substituted by the strongly dipolar cyano group and spaced by 16 atoms along the backbone. The preparative chemistry of chiral macromolecules is challenging given the limited number of polymerization methodologies and the inherent translational periodicity of synthetic polymers. The authors have synthesized here low symmetry chiral macromolecules in which the only symmetry element retained is polar translation; achiral homogues lacking the nitril function, the configurationally disordered polymer, and dimeric model compounds were prepared as well. 25 refs., 15 figs., 4 tabs.

Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
AC02-76ER01198
OSTI ID:
274286
Journal Information:
Journal of the American Chemical Society, Journal Name: Journal of the American Chemical Society Journal Issue: 9 Vol. 114; ISSN JACSAT; ISSN 0002-7863
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Similar Records

Materials chemistry of chiral macromolecules. 2: Solid-state structures
Journal Article · Mon Apr 10 00:00:00 EDT 1995 · Macromolecules · OSTI ID:46016

Macroscopic chirality of a liquid crystal from nonchiral molecules
Journal Article · Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 EDT 2001 · Physical Review E · OSTI ID:40203348