Work carried in the authors’ laboratory on Si– CH2–Si bridged polycarbosilanes is reviewed. In pursuit of high-yield polymeric precursors to silicon carbide, convenient synthetic routes to both linear and hyperbranched polycarbosilanes having a ‘[SiH2CH2]n’ compositional formula have been developed. The linear [SiH2CH2]n polymer was prepared by ring-opening polymerization of a substituted disil...

Hyperbranched macromolecules (HMs, also called hyperbranched polymers) are highly branched three-dimensional (3D) structures in which all bonds converge to a focal point or core, and which have a multiplicity of reactive chain-ends. This review summarizes major types of synthetic strategies exploited to produce HMs, including the step-growth polycondensation, the self-condensing vinyl polymeriz...

The combination of linear polymers with dendritic chain-ends has led to numerous studies of linear-dendritic polymer hybrid materials. Interchain branching within the linear segment of these materials has recently extended this concept to the formation of soluble hyperbranched-polydendrons. Here, the introduction of amphiphilicity into hyperbranched-polydendrons has been achieved for the first ...

The preparation of carboxylated hyperbranched polyglycerols of narrow polydispersity was achieved by modification (78-90%) of the hydroxyl end groups via Michael addition of acrylonitrile, followed by hydrolysis. High conversion could only be achieved for low molecular weight starting materials (520 and 1,030 g mol-1). The solution properties of the resulting materials were investigated by dyna...

Sequence-controlled polymers (SCPs) such as DNA and proteins play an important role in biology. Many efforts have been devoted to synthesize SCPs in the past half a century. However, to our knowledge, the artificial sequences containing independently functional groups have never been reported. Here, we present a facile and scalable approach based on radical-initiated step-growth polymerization ...

As environmentally friendly and degradable material, Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) ultrafine fibers are promising candidates for the removal of oil from water. In this work, a self-established needleless melt-electrospinning process was used to produce PLA ultrafine fibers with diameters in the range of 800 nm–9 μm. In order to obtain ultrafine fibers, three types of hyperbranched polymers were respe...

Two novel highly fluorescent hyperbranched polybenzobisthiazole amides with a donor–acceptor architecture and large Stokes shift were rationally designed and synthesized. The chemical structures of the prepared hyperbranched polymers were characterized using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis, Hydrogen Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (1H-NMR) analysis, and Gel Permeation Chromat...

This study plans to develop a nanoparticle technology that can assemble different polymeric "building blocks" with various desired functionalities into one nanosystem in a pH-dependent manner. For this purpose, polymeric building blocks were specifically designed with hyperbranched architectures, and orthogonal pH-reversible phenylboronic acid-diols were taken as "joints" to integrate them toge...