Issue 14, 2022

Building permanently optically active particles from an absolutely achiral polymer

Abstract

Chirality in polymer particles represents one of the most dynamic areas of nanoscale materials today. The chirality of most chiral polymeric particles (CPPs) derived from achiral monomers/polymers has a strong dependence on the chiral source. After the removal of the chiral source, the helical structures in these CPPs cannot be recovered from external-stimuli-triggered destruction. Herein, for the first time, a novel strategy has developed for constructing polymer particles with permanent chirality by partially cross-linking the azobenzene (Azo) units to allow perfect recovery of the destroyed helical superstructure without any chiral sources. A fraction of the Azo units was modified with hydroxyl groups as cross-linking sites to permanently store the chiral information from the chiral solvent in the CPPs. Remarkably, the stored chiral information by the fraction of cross-linked Azo units can trigger the other free Azo units to reconstruct the helical superstructure to the previous level by simple heating–cooling treatment or visible light irradiation. We anticipate that our strategy will promote the flexible design and fabrication of new types of advanced functional chiral nanomaterials from absolute achiral sources.

Graphical abstract: Building permanently optically active particles from an absolutely achiral polymer

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Communication
Submitted
11 Feb 2022
Accepted
13 Mar 2022
First published
16 Mar 2022

Polym. Chem., 2022,13, 1953-1959

Building permanently optically active particles from an absolutely achiral polymer

Z. He, T. Miao, X. Cheng, H. Ma, Y. Ma, W. Zhang and X. Zhu, Polym. Chem., 2022, 13, 1953 DOI: 10.1039/D2PY00187J

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements