Highly Ordered Cylinder Morphologies with 10 nm Scale Periodicity in Biomass-Based Block Copolymers

Microphase-separated structures of block copolymers (BCPs) have attracted considerable attention for their potential application in the bottom-up fabrication of 10 nm scale nanostructured materials. To realize sustainable development within this field, the creation of novel BCP materials from renewable biomass resources is of fundamental interest. Thus, we herein focused on maltoheptaose-b-poly(5decanolactone)-b-maltoheptaose (MH-b-PDL-b-MH) as a sustainable alternative for nanostructure-forming BCPs, in which both constitutional blocks can be derived from renewable biomass resources, in the case, delta-decanolactone and amylose. Well-defined MH-b-PDL-b-MHs with varying PDL lengths were synthesized through a combination of controlled/living ring-opening polymerization and the click reaction. The prepared MH-b-PDL-b-MHs successfully self-assembled into highly ordered hexagonal cylindrical structures with a domain spacing of similar to 12-14 nm in both the bulk and thin film states. Interestingly, the as-cast thin films of MH-b-PDL-b-MHs (with PDL lengths of 9K and 13K) form horizontal cylinders, with thermal annealing (180 degrees C, 30 min) resulting in a drastic change in the domain orientation from horizontal to vertical. Thus, the results presented herein demonstrated that the combination of oligosaccharides and biomass-derived hydrophobic polymers appears promising for the sustainable development of nanotechnology and related fields.