Sliding graft copolymers – Supramolecular derivatives equipping promising potentials

Abstract

Among a wide variety of supramolecules, polyrotaxanes and their derivatives are the most investigated and most promising candidates from the viewpoint of materials chemistry. One category of such derivatives involves a series of molecules, in which many side chains are grafted to the ring moieties of the polyrotaxane backbone, yielding a novel type of graft copolymer with freely sliding/rotating side chains. These types of copolymers, which were very recently synthesized and named as “sliding graft copolymers” (SGC), indicates numbers of peculiar properties, which were not observed for conventional covalent graft copolymers. In the present article, recent results on synthesis, characterizations and properties of various types of SGC molecules are briefly overviewed.