Abstract
This review discusses seven synthetic approaches for fabricating topologically crosslinked polymers with rotaxane structures at the crosslinking points (rotaxane-crosslinked polymers, RCPs). RCPs exhibit unique properties such as high swelling capability, high elasticity and stimuli-responsiveness attributed to the rotaxane-crosslinking points. This article primarily focuses on the four most recently developed strategic approaches for synthesizing RCPs in which various rotaxane components, such as crown ethers/ammonium salts, cyclodextrins/hydrophobic guests and metal-coordinated macrocycles/ligands, are employed. Two of these RCP synthetic methods efficiently introduce special structures and functions into the RCP crosslinking points. Using these methods, we inserted well-studied rotaxane systems that exhibit deslipping behavior into the crosslinking points of network polymers. Notably, each of the resulting RCPs exhibited chemostimuli-responsive or photoresponsive degradability due to the deslipping behavior of the rotaxane system incorporated into the RCP. The other two methods are based on the use of rotaxane crosslinkers to fabricate versatile RCPs containing vinyl trunk polymers. The efficiencies and applications of these recently developed methods are compared with those of conventional methods.
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Acknowledgements
I thank all my co-workers and collaborators for their great contributions to the studies covered in this review: Professor T Takata as a research supervisor (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan), Dr Y Kohsaka (methods 4 and 5), Dr K Nakazono (method 4), Professor S Asai (methods 4 and 6), Mr T Yoshii (method 5), Mr T Moriyama (method 5), Mr T Suzuki (method 5), Dr T Arai (method 6), Dr K Jang (method 6), Mr M Ogawa (method 7), Ms A Kawasaki (method 7) and Mr K Iijima (method 5 and new systems). Moreover, I am grateful for the financial support from JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers 22750101, 21106508, 24685023 and 25102510.
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Koyama, Y. Synthesis of topologically crosslinked polymers with rotaxane-crosslinking points. Polym J 46, 315–322 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/pj.2014.9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/pj.2014.9
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