Helical Polymers: Optical Activity

许多天然产生的大分子和几种合成聚合物以螺旋构象存在。在合成聚合物中，与它们的天然类似物不同，这种材料由等量的右旋和左旋螺旋的混合物组成，因此不表现出旋光性。这项研究的目的是合成和研究主要或完全在一个螺杆意义上具有螺旋的缩醛聚合物的性质。这些聚合物，就像螺旋的天然大分子一样，应该具有光学活性。这项研究将寻求确定与螺旋度相关的基本大分子结构，考察不同侧基对螺旋的影响，并研究导致产物螺旋度的各种聚合引发和传播机制。这些类型的聚合物几乎是未知的，这项研究将进一步扩大我们合成具有极高结构精度的聚合物的能力，并将其分子结构与观察到的块状材料的性质联系起来。

Many naturally occurring macromolecules, and several synthetic polymers, exist in their helical conformation. In synthetic polymers, unlike in their natural analogs, the material consists of a mixture of equal quantities of right.handed and left.handed helixes and, therefore, does not exhibit the property of optical activity. This research has as its aim to synthesize and study the properties of acetal polymers with helices predominantly or exclusively in one screw sense. These polymers, like helical natural macromolecules, should be optically active. The research will seek to identify the basic macromolecular structure related to helicity, examine the influence of various side groups on the helix, and study various polymerization mechanisms of initiation and propagation leading to helicity in the products. These types of polymers are virtually unknown, and this investigation should further extend our ability to synthesize polymers with great structural precision and to relate their molecular structure to observed properties of the bulk material.