Comb and Bottlebrush Polymers with Superior Rheological and Mechanical Properties.

Comb and bottlebrush polymers present a wide range of rheological and mechanical properties that can be controlled through their molecular characteristics, such as the backbone and side chain lengths as well as the number of branches per molecule or the grafting density. This review investigates the impact of these characteristics specifically on the zero shear viscosity, strain hardening behavior, and plateau shear modulus. It is shown that for a comb polymer with an entangled backbone and entangled side chains, a maximum in the strain hardening factor and minimum in the zero shear viscosity η can be achieved through selection of an optimum number of branches q.

Divergent dendrimer synthesis via the Passerini three-component reaction and olefin cross-metathesis.

The combination of the Passerini reaction and olefin cross-metathesis is shown to be a very useful approach for the divergent synthesis of dendrimers. Castor oil-derived platform chemicals, such as 10-undecenoic acid and 10-undecenal, are reacted in a Passerini reaction with an unsaturated isocyanide to obtain a core unit having three terminal double bonds. Subsequent olefin cross-metathesis with tert-butyl acrylate, followed by hydrogenation of the double bonds and hydrolysis of the tert-butyl ester, leads to an active core unit bearing three carboxylic acid groups as reactive sites.