Single polymer growth dynamics
Abstract
Polymers can grow through the stepwise addition of monomers to an active end site. One might think that this would happen in a continuous linear process. With a focus on ring-opening metathesis polymerization of norbornene catalyzed by a Grubbs' catalyst, Liu et al. describe the growth of a single polymer chain. By attaching one end of a growing polymer to a bead exerting a constant force on it, they measured the extension occurring during the growth of the polymer. Oddly, the extension of the growing polymer did not increase continuously. Instead, it exhibited consecutive wait-and-jump steps, owing to conformational entanglements formed by newly incorporated monomers.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Oct 20, 2017
- Source ID
- 10.1126/science.aan6837
Entities
People
- Chunming Liu
- Endian Wang
- Feng Yang
- Fernando A Escobedo
- Geoffrey W. Coates
- Guanqun Chen
- Kaori Kubo
- Kyu-Sung Han
- Peng Chen
Organizations
- American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund
- Army Research Office
- Cornell University
- National Science Foundation
- United States Department of Energy