Precise Supramolecular Polymerization of Liquid Crystalline Block Copolymer Initiated by Heavy Metallic Salts

Heavy metallic salts are capable to bind with proteins and cause detrimental fibrilization in living cells. Herein, we report a similar case of supramolecular polymerization and thus fibrilization from a liquid crystalline (LC) block copolymer (BCP) initiated by heavy metallic salts. Analogous to the naturally-occurring process, LC BCP “monomers” could bind with metallic salts to form small aggregates, which functioned as seeds to trigger the subsequent supramolecular polymerization of the rest BCP monomers, to produce highly uniform supramolecular polymers. The lengths of the resultant supramolecular polymer fibrils were linearly proportional to the ratios between the BCP and the metallic salts, and largely influenced by the choice of metallic cations, as well as the counterions. Lastly, this method was used to polymerize two different diblock copolymer “monomers” to produce pentablock supramolecular polymers in a one-pot manner.