Architectural Polymers, Nanostructures, and Hierarchical Structures from Block Copolymers

Architectural Polymers, Nanostructures, and Hierarchical Structures from Block Copolymers 

Department of Chemistry, Queen s University, 90 Bader Lane, Kingston, Ontario, K7L 3N6, Canada 

Structures govern function. This applies both to the macroscopic world, as well as to the molecular world. Because of this, building architectures from molecules with controlled shape and dimension has been a long passion for chemists. 

Over the past 18 years, our group has been systematically advancing and developing methodologies for the preparation of architectures from block copolymers. These architectures have included architectural polymers, nanostructures, and hierarchical structures. Reviewed in this chapter are our major contributions to this field. This chapter is not meant to be a comprehensive review of the field, but instead will focus primarily on our major contributions. 

A nanostructure should possess a regular geometric shape, which can be spherical, cylindrical, vesicular, tubular, and so forth. Also, the smallest dimension, such as the diameter of a cylinder, within a nanostructure should be less than 100 nm. A hierarchical stmcture is typically larger than a nanostructure. More importantly, hierarchical structures are formed through the multitier assembly of block copolymers, and have structural order at several length 

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Block copolymers are versatile precursors for the preparation of various kinds of architectures, ranging from architectural polymers to nanostructures and hierarchical structures. This chapter... 

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