A review article entitled “From macromonomers to bottlebrush copolymers with sequence control: synthesis, properties and applications” by Ki Hyun Kim, Jiyun Nam, Jinwoong Choi, Myungeun Seo and Joona Bang was published in Polymer Chemistry. We wrote this review with the Joona Bang group at Korea University.

A bottlebrush polymer containing densely grafted side chains per every repeating unit is a unique architecture class in polymer science. The extended backbone due to steric repulsion between side chains allows for construction of cylindrical nanoobjects with magnified entanglement molecular weight and dense population of functionalities at the periphery. Emerging applications such as supersoft elastomers and photonic crystals can be realized based on their unique physical properties.

Development of graft-through ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) of macromonomers (MM) has enabled synthesis of complex bottlebrush polymers possessing discrete chemical constituents with spatial control. Here we review recent advances of graft-through polymerization via ROMP towards complex bottlebrush polymer synthesis along with the structure-property relationship and applications. The paper is available at the following link:

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2022/py/d2py00126h

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