Molecular Structure of Foldable Bottlebrush Polymers in Melts.

ABSTRACT: A bottlebrush polymer consists of a long linear backbone densely grafted with many relatively short side chains. A widely accepted view is that strong steric repulsion among the highly overlapped side chains prestrains the bottlebrush backbone, resulting in low polymer extensibility. However, we recently discovered that in the melt of bottlebrush polymers with highly incompatible side chains and backbone, the backbone collapses to reduce interfacial free energy, regardless of the strong steric repulsion among side chains. Despite this discovery, the molecular structure of these so-called "foldable" bottlebrush polymers and their assemblies remains poorly understood. Here, we present the deterministic relationships among molecular architecture, mesoscopic conformation, and macroscopic prope

SUBMITTER: Cai LH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12020426 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature