Chain stopper engineering for hydrogen bonded supramolecular polymers

• Thomas Pinault,
• Bruno Andrioletti and
• Laurent Bouteiller

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2010, 6, 869–875, doi:10.3762/bjoc.6.102

• analogue of the bis-urea monomer is shown not to form a supramolecular polymer, but a good chain stopper, because it is a strong hydrogen bond donor and a weak acceptor. Moreover, all substituted ureas tested reduce the viscosity of the supramolecular polymer solutions, but the best chain stopper is

• obtained when two hydrogen bond acceptors are placed in the same relative position as for the monomer and when no hydrogen bond donor is present. Keywords: chain stopper; gel; hydrogen bond; supramolecular polymer; urea; Introduction Supramolecular polymers are linear chains of low molar mass monomers

• ][21]. The effectiveness of these schemes depends directly on the design of the chain-stopper: the interaction between chain-stopper and monomer should ideally be as strong as the interaction between monomers. It is therefore of interest to identify chain stoppers with an improved affinity toward a