Chiral studies across the spectrum of polymer science

Abstract

This Account describes how stereochemical ideas focused on chirality have been directed widely across polymer science allowing experiments that could not be conducted on small molecules and leading to new insights and new kinds of materials. In one approach, a helical polymer was studied, and it was discovered how the chiral information necessary to choose helical sense is greatly amplified. In another approach, the racemization kinetics of atropisomers were used to characterize the restrictions to motion associated with a polyelectrolyte that forms clusters around hydrophobic groups in water and in an entirely different system, the glassy state formed by polymers.