Entropic Effects on the Supramolecular Self-Assembly of Macromolecules

ACS Macro Lett. 2015 Jul 21;4(7):774-777. doi: 10.1021/acsmacrolett.5b00335. Epub 2015 Jul 7.

Abstract

We report the transfer of entropic chain length effects into the realm of supramolecular chemistry and thereby demonstrate a macromolecular method to tune the reaction equilibria of hydrogen bonding motifs via the application of substituents of differing lengths and masses while not altering the actual recognition units to achieve a difference in the degree of association. The supramolecular adducts are characterized via temperature-dependent nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy.