Sugar-Based Polymers with Stereochemistry-Dependent Degradability and Mechanical Properties.

ABSTRACT: Stereochemistry in polymers can be used as an effective tool to control the mechanical and physical properties of the resulting materials. Typically, though, in synthetic polymers, differences among polymer stereoisomers leads to incremental property variation, i.e., no changes to the baseline plastic or elastic behavior. Here we show that stereochemical differences in sugar-based monomers yield a family of nonsegmented, alternating polyurethanes that can be either strong amorphous thermoplastic elastomers with properties that exceed most cross-linked rubbers or robust, semicrystalline thermoplastics with properties comparable to commercial plastics. The stereochemical differences in the monomers direct distinct intra- and interchain supramolecular hydrogen-bonding interactions in the bulk

SUBMITTER: Stubbs CJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8796236 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature