Issue 1, 2015

Exploiting nucleobase-containing materials – from monomers to complex morphologies using RAFT dispersion polymerization

Abstract

The synthesis of nucleobase-containing polymers was successfully performed by RAFT dispersion polymerization in both chloroform and 1,4-dioxane and self-assembly was induced by the polymerizations. A combination of scattering and microscopy techniques were used to characterize the morphologies. It is found that the morphologies of self-assembled nucleobase-containing polymers are solvent dependent. By varying the DP of the core-forming block, only spherical micelles with internal structures were obtained in chloroform when using only adenine-containing methacrylate or a mixture of adenine-containing methacrylate and thymine-containing methacrylate as monomers. However, higher order structures and morphology transitions were observed in 1,4-dioxane. A sphere-rod-lamella-twisted bilayer transition was observed in this study. Moreover, the kinetics of the dispersion polymerizations were studied in both solvents, suggesting a different formation mechanism in these systems.

Graphical abstract: Exploiting nucleobase-containing materials – from monomers to complex morphologies using RAFT dispersion polymerization

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
04 Aug 2014
Accepted
10 Sep 2014
First published
11 Sep 2014
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Polym. Chem., 2015,6, 106-117

Author version available

Exploiting nucleobase-containing materials – from monomers to complex morphologies using RAFT dispersion polymerization

Y. Kang, A. Pitto-Barry, H. Willcock, W. Quan, N. Kirby, A. M. Sanchez and R. K. O'Reilly, Polym. Chem., 2015, 6, 106 DOI: 10.1039/C4PY01074D

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