PDF (Complete Thesis)
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Intramolecular Conflict: Conformation and Self-Assembly of Architecturally Complex Macromolecules in Solution Thesis by Paul Pirogovsky In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Pasadena, California 2014 (Defended Nov 1st, 2013) ii 2014 Paul Pirogovsky All Rights Reserved iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to all of the people who have contributed to the completion of this thesis either by furthering the work detailed within or by supporting me during the process. First of all I would like to thank my advisor Julie Kornfield for taking me under her wing and keeping me inspired during all of the years that it took to complete this work. Her enthusiasm and insight helped me to look past the failures and to see opportunities and always helped me to see the beautiful science hidden behind all of the dirty glassware. I would also like to thank Zhen-Gang Wang for being my first mentor at Caltech and for continuing to support me even when I was struggling and unsure of what to do next. I am grateful to Milo Koretsky and Skip Rochefort who let me muddle about in their labs as an undergraduate and thereby gave me my first taste of research. I appreciate the time and energy put in by the members of my committee (Professors Mark Davis, David Tirrell and Zhen-Gang Wang) in reviewing my thesis. Throughout my time at Caltech I have always been amazed at just how helpful people can be. Mike Roy made a lot of parts for my half-baked designs and more importantly was always happy to teach me how to do it myself next time. Rick Gerhardt is amazing with glassware and never made me feel too badly about having broken a Schlenk line. Everyone on the second floor of Spalding has been nice and willing to go out of their way to help. Suresh Gupta kept the computers crunching numbers and securely storing data and was instrumental in setting up the Kornfield lab cluster. Marcy Fowler and later Andrea Arias kept track of the craziness that is the Kornfield lab calendar and made travel a breeze. Kathy Bubash and Karen Baumgartner were always there to discuss the meaning of life and also make sure that forms made it to the right place and things actually got done. The best part of a lab is always the people and it was a pleasure to work with the awesome folks in the Kornfield lab. I enjoyed the many interesting and in-depth conversations that I had with Matthew Mattson and Loddie Foose, both kind and thoughtful people even if their political views fall on opposite ends of the spectrum. Nothing brings people closer than sleepless nights spent together surrounded by giant machinery running neutron and x-ray iv experiments. I will always happily remember the scattering trips with my brothers and sisters in arms: Zuli Kurji, Rohan Hule, Artemis Ailianou, Joey Kim and Boyu Li. It’s been fun hanging out and complaining about life with Amy Fu, with whom I feel comfortable talking about pretty much everything. Jeremy Wei was always there to help out with anything in the lab, kept us all safe, and taught me the little that I know about synthetic procedures. Brad Olsen is a nice guy, a fantastic role model, and the most talented person with whom I have had the privilege of working. I am really grateful to have spent my grad school years surrounded by great people, as it really made the time fly. Many of the experiments described in this thesis were conducted at various national laboratory facilities. I would like to acknowledge the Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of Commerce for supporting the facilities of Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). I am grateful for the opportunity to learn about experimental techniques and data analysis provided by the DOE in the form of the National School of X-ray and Neutron Scattering. It was awesome to get a chance to learn from the leading experts in the field. Some of those same experts later helped me with the experiments. They designed, built and supported the scattering instruments at the national laboratory facility and help even the most demanding and difficult of users. I would like to thank Boualem Hammouda, John Barker, Lionel Porcar, Cedric Gagnon, Jeff Kryzwon, Kim Tomasi, Rex Hjelm, Monika Hartl, Ken Littrell, Lilin He, Kathy Bailey, John Ankner, Jim Browning and Candice Halbert for all of their help in making the scattering happen. I am grateful to my family for being supportive and for always being there to help or just to lend an ear. Michael and Karen accepted me into their family and made me feel loved whenever we saw each other. Megan and Dane are the siblings that I never had. My parents Peter and Nina inspired me to go into science and provided the financial, intellectual and emotional support that I needed to get to the end of this journey. My grandfather Oleg and grandmother Sylvia were always there to share tales of research in a very different environment and were happy to listen to me talk about my work while feeding me as much v as I could possibly eat. Without family, life is empty, and thanks to you mine has always been full. Finally I want to thank the wonderful lady who came with me to Southern California and agreed to be my wife. Mallory is wonderful, smart, sweet, and snarky and has always made me smile, even when absolutely nothing was working. We also got to share the PhD experience, and she led the way, becoming the first Dr. Pirogovsky of our generation. It’s been grand, so long, and thanks for all the fish. vi ABSTRACT The solution behavior of linear polymer chains is well understood, having been the subject of intense study throughout the previous century. As plastics have become ubiquitous in everyday life, polymer science has grown into a major field of study. The conformation of a polymer in solution depends on the molecular architecture and its interactions with the surroundings. Developments in synthetic techniques have led to the creation of precision-tailored polymeric materials with varied topologies and functionalities. In order to design materials with the desired properties, it is imperative to understand the relationships between polymer architecture and their conformation and behavior. To meet that need, this thesis investigates the conformation and self-assembly of three architecturally complex macromolecular systems with rich and varied behaviors driven by the resolution of intramolecular conflicts. First we describe the development of a robust and facile synthetic approach to reproducible bottlebrush polymers (Chapter 2). The method was used to produce homologous series of bottlebrush polymers with polynorbornene backbones, which revealed the effect of side-chain and backbone length on the overall conformation in both good and theta solvent conditions (Chapter 3). The side-chain conformation was obtained from a series of SANS experiments and determined to be indistinguishable from the behavior of free linear polymer chains. Using deuterium-labeled bottlebrushes, we were able for the first time to directly observe the backbone conformation of a bottlebrush polymer which showed self-avoiding walk behavior. Secondly, a series of SANS experiments was conducted on a homologous series of Side Group Liquid Crystalline Polymers (SGLCPs) in a perdeuterated small molecule liquid crystal (5CB). Monodomain, aligned, dilute samples of SGLCP-b-PS block copolymers were seen to self- assemble into complex micellar structures with mutually orthogonally oriented anisotropies at vii different length scales (Chapter 4). Finally, we present the results from the first scattering experiments on a set of fuel-soluble, associating telechelic polymers. We observed the formation of supramolecular aggregates in dilute (≤0.5wt%) solutions of telechelic polymers and determined that the choice of solvent has a significant effect on the strength of association and the size of the supramolecules (Chapter 5). A method was developed for the direct estimation of supramolecular aggregation number from SANS data. The insight into structure- property relationships obtained from this work will enable the more targeted development of these molecular architectures for their respective applications. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ iii Abstract ........................................................................................................................... vi Table of Contents ......................................................................................................... viii List of Figures .................................................................................................................. x List of Tables ................................................................................................................. xii List of Schemes ............................................................................................................ xiii Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 Intramolecular Conflict .................................................................................... I-1 1.2 Polymer Chains in Solution ............................................................................. I-3 1.3 Experimental Characterization of Polymers .................................................. I-12 1.4