Mechanochemical unzipping of insulating polyladderene to semiconducting polyacetylene

Zhixing Chen; Jaron A M Mercer; Xiaolei Zhu; Joseph A H Romaniuk; Raphael Pfattner; Lynette Cegelski; Todd J Martinez; Noah Z Burns; Yan Xia

doi:10.1126/science.aan2797

Mechanochemical unzipping of insulating polyladderene to semiconducting polyacetylene

Science. 2017 Aug 4;357(6350):475-479. doi: 10.1126/science.aan2797.

Authors

Zhixing Chen¹, Jaron A M Mercer¹, Xiaolei Zhu^{1

2

3}, Joseph A H Romaniuk¹, Raphael Pfattner⁴, Lynette Cegelski¹, Todd J Martinez^{5

2

3}, Noah Z Burns⁵, Yan Xia⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
² The PULSE Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
³ SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA.
⁴ Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
⁵ Department of Chemistry, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. toddmtz@stanford.edu nburns@stanford.edu yanx@stanford.edu.

PMID: 28774923
DOI: 10.1126/science.aan2797

Abstract

Biological systems sense and respond to mechanical stimuli in a complex manner. In an effort to develop synthetic materials that transduce mechanical force into multifold changes in their intrinsic properties, we report on a mechanochemically responsive nonconjugated polymer that converts to a conjugated polymer via an extensive rearrangement of the macromolecular structure in response to force. Our design is based on the facile mechanochemical unzipping of polyladderene, a polymer inspired by a lipid natural product structure and prepared via direct metathesis polymerization. The resultant polyacetylene block copolymers exhibit long conjugation length and uniform trans-configuration and self-assemble into semiconducting nanowires. Calculations support a tandem unzipping mechanism of the ladderene units.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.