Themed collection Most popular 2023 polymer and supramolecular chemistry articles

As researchers, industries and consumers move towards more sustainable products there is a clear need to define what sustainability means in fast moving consumer goods and how it can be considered at the design stage.

We provide an overview of coordination cage catalysis, highlighting how mechanistic understanding can help address the challenges in this area leading to new opportunities in non-covalent reactivity.

This perspective focuses on the development of organic hierarchical nanostructures based on magnetically controlled assembly methods, which are guided by the requirements of organic integrated photonics.

We discuss the current state-of-the-art in exploiting fluorescence-based techniques for analysing polymer systems and soft matter materials, as well as provide an outlook on future opportunities and challenges.

This work reviewed recent advances in the design, fabrication, and responsiveness of permeable polymersomes, and their diverse applications in the fields of biomimetic nanoreactors, artificial cells and organelles, as well as nanomedicine were highlighted.

This review provides a multidisciplinary overview of the challenges and opportunities for dynamic covalent chemistry-based macromolecules towards the design of new, sustainable, and recyclable materials for a circular economy.

Pathway complexity results in unique materials from the same components according to the assembly conditions.

Water-soluble and biodegradable polyphosphoester polymer bottlebrush copolymers and amphiphilic assemblies prepared by a combination of anionic ring-opening and metathesis polymerization.

Yeehaw! The rotation of a visible-light-driven molecular motor based on barbituric acid is tamed by a hydrogen bonding “lasso” mechanism between its serendipitously-formed tertiary hydroxy stereocentre and its lower half carbonyl groups.

A new method for the assembly of a heterobimetallic [PdPtL₄]⁴⁺ cage which can interact with anionic guest molecules in a specific, selective host–guest orientation is described.

Racemic and enantiopure spirophanes and bispirophanes consisting of orthogonally configured tetrahomo corona[4]arene and i-corona[4]arene macrocycles were obtained and they displayed interesting tetrathiafulvalene binding and chiroptical properties.

A novel methodology based on the use of phenanthrenequinone is applied to selectively change the subcomponent of TPMA-based cages, thus controlling inclusion ratio of competing guests differing in size or chirality.

Thiophene substitution at the 3-position of PQ enhances its reactivity in PQ-ERA photoclick reactions, resulting in increased efficiency, yields, rate constants, and oxygen tolerance, offering prospects for efficient photoclick transformations.

The self-assembly of imine-based dynamic covalent architectures involves component selection and self-correction processes to generate homo-self-sorted outputs, even in dynamic constitutional networks of high complexity.

Sequence-defined antibody recruiting macromolecules containing dinitrophenol as antibody-binding motif and biotin as terminal moiety, have been prepared and show sequence-dependent binding avidity to anti-DNP antibodies.

The work demonstrates unique chiral guest’s triggered spring-like contraction and extension motions coupled with unidirectional twisting upon successive coordination to a flexible and ‘nano-size’ achiral trizinc(II)porphyrin trimer.

Codons in synthetic copolymers—sequence-specific short segments encoding synthetic copolymer properties—became quantifiable via thermal fragmentation and virtual reconstruction based on unsupervised learning of pyrolysis mass-spectra.

We demonstrate the scope of combining polymorphism and topochemistry for the designed synthesis of polymorphs of a polymer. Polymorphs of a designed monomer underwent topochemical polymerization to polymer–polymorphs.

Herein a new class of spin filters based on subphthalocyanines is reported. We measure the CISS effect by means of magnetic conductive probe atomic force microscopy (mc-AFM). Remarkably, the resulting devices show spin polarizations (SPs) as high as ca. 50%.

We report herein two lemniscular carbon nanohoops bis-po-CC and bis-pm-TC with contiguous conjugation from planar chiral [2.2]paracyclophane, and elucidate the influence of the regioselective synthesis on their topological chirality.

Radical ring-opening copolymerization of isoprene and dibenzo[c,e]oxepane-5-thione via free-radical and controlled radical polymerizations led to degradable polyisoprene under basic, oxidative and physiological conditions with application to prodrug nanoparticles.

Strained alkyne-containing cycloparaphenylenes unite curved carbon nanomaterials with tunable reactivity via physical organic chemistry. Herein we describe the rational design and synthesis of new derivatives with heightened SPAAC reactivity.

Acceptor engineered supramolecular photosensitizers with a proming phototoxicity index (PI) for effective and safe photodynamic therapy in vivo.

We have shown that organic folded structures can be utilized to elicit piezo-, ferroelectric and efficient second harmonic generation – all within a single component, macroscopically dipole active system.

The extreme axial twist of a Pd₂L₄ cage facilitates tight encapsulation of mono-anions through prolate-oblate cavity adaptation. In the absence of a suitable guest, the helical cage exists in equilibrium with an ‘unwound’ mesocate isomer.

The bottom-up construction of multiphase droplets with structural and functional mimicry of intracellular organelles, capable of spatiotemporal confinement and coordination of complex reaction networks.

Herein, we present a simple design concept for a monomer that affords individually separated supramolecular polymer chains.

An achiral TPE-based cage with the dynamic rotational conformation exhibits chiral adaptive recognition with sequence specificity for aromatic L-/D-dipeptides to achieve adaptive CD and CPL responses in aqueous solution.

Reported here is the catalytic enantioselective desymmetrization of calixarene skeletons for the construction of inherently chiral calixarenes through a transannular arene–arene dehydrogenative coupling reaction.

The addition of small amounts of xanthate can turn conventional RAFT polymerizations into rapid photo-activated reactions with high livingness, oxygen tolerance and versatility enabling straightforward multiblock synthesis or well plate screening.