Research Interests

Dendronized polymers (DPs) are a fascinating class of macromolecules which allow for the exploration of numerous phenomena. They include thickness effects, object-like behavior, single molecule chemistry, guest loading effects, and molecular constructions. Often, the behavior of DPs differs vastly from that of classical linear polymers. Our group has developed a class of DPs the synthesis of which relies on well-established reactions from peptide chemistry, creating near-perfect structures even for very large molecules.

In the attempted synthesis of DPs beyond generation 5, a process of main-chain scission has been observed. This roadblock has successfully been overcome by application of a double-exponential growth protocol; however, the method suffers from intrinsic limitations and the resulting structure perfection is lower than required for experiments towards, e.g., DPs as molecular objects.
The focus of my research is to explore the causes of this scission process and to overcome the resulting limitations by modification of peripheral groups in high-generation DPs.

Key References:

The Largest Synthetic Structure with Molecular Precision: Towards a Molecular Object - Zhang, B. et. al., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2011, 50, 737-740

Synthesis of Dendronized Polymers by a "n + 2" Approach – Yu, H. et. al., Macromolecules, 2012, 45, 8555-8560

Main-Chain Scission of a Charged Fifth-Generation Dendronized Polymer – Yu, H. et. al., Helv. Chim. Acta, 2012, 95, 2399-2410

Publications