Copolymers have been fundamental macromolecules comprising two or more types of monomer species. The intriguing feature of copolymers, the high designability of physicochemical properties based on composition and topology, has made them indispensable soft materials. However, despite the enormous potential structural diversity of copolymers, their design has remained restricted to only four architectures and their combinations—random, sequence-controlled, block, and graft—as classified by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). For the past 70 years, advances in copolymer chemistry have been constrained within this framework.
This research group has successfully created a completely new type of copolymer that does not fit into the conventional copolymer categories. By using one-dimensional nanochannels of a Metal–Organic Framework (MOF), they produced “bundle copolymers”, in which different polymer chains are aligned in parallel and covalently linked to form a double-stranded architecture. This breakthrough introduces a new design direction for soft materials and opens the door to next-generation functional polymers that transcend the limitations of existing copolymer architectures.
Papers
Journal: Nature Communications
Title: Synthesis of bundle copolymers as an emergent class of copolymer architecture
Authors: Yuki Kametani, Rintaro Yamaguchi, Yusuke Ando, Yuta Kawasaki, Takashi Uemura
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