www.asiachem.news December 2021 | 23 Figure 2. Major achievements in supramolecular polymerization and related materials. (a) Bucky gels, materials made from the dispersion of carbon nanotubes in ionic liquid – adapted from Science.21a (b) Nanotubular supramolecular polymerization – adapted from Science.11 (c) Aquamaterials, mechanically robust materials made from water with a small amounts of additives.24 (d) Ferroelectric columnar liquid crystal – adapted from Science.26a (e) Nanotube made by the chaperonin protein GroEL and its use as an ATP-responsive drug delivery system – adapted from Nature Chemistry.25 (f) Living chain growth (ring opening) supramolecular polymerization – adapted from Science.18 (g) Supramolecular polymerization in mesogenic media affording a stimuli responsive coreshell columnar liquid crystal – adapted from Science.26b resulting in polymeric assemblies of poor structural integrity. Our new finding of SF-ASP casts aside this preconception and features two unexpected advantages, that under solvent-free conditions, the monomer is produced in an autocatalytic manner from its precursor and that polymerization occurs in a living manner without any inhibition to afford block copolymers. We serendipitously found the basic principle of SF-ASP while investigating the ferroelectric nature of H-bonding phthalonitrile derivatives (PNC4). Upon heating a powdery sample of PNC4 sandwiched between glass plates, we noticed that, approximately 4 h after heating at 160°C, numerous thin, green-colored fibers composed of the corresponding phthalocyanine (PCC4) (Fig. 4b) began to appear and rapidly elongate (Fig. 4c). After 24 h, the reaction mixture no longer included the precursor PNC4 and we obtained analytically pure PCC4
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