A significant breakthrough has been achieved in the synthetic chemistry of polymers by a research team, led by Junji Sakamoto, Senior Lecturer, and A. Dieter Schlüter, Professor at the Polymers Institute - ETH Zurich. For the first time, researchers have developed two-dimensional polymers or ordered planar polymers.
The structural difference between chain-like polymers with linear repeat units (blue boxes) and their two-dimensional counterparts with areal repeat units (orange triangles)
Polymers are created when monomers, small single molecules, get linked with each other by chemical reactions. Schlüter raised a question that if there is a possibility to form giant one-dimensional molecules from monomers, then why should it not be practicable to build a synthetic chemistry that creates two-dimensional molecules?
Hence, researchers have considered the creation of two-dimensional polymers either in a single crystal or at a water-air interface after thorough analysis on the potential ways of producing synthetically. They finally decided to work on the second option. Patrick Kissel, a doctoral student, has successfully utilized the polymerization method to crystallize unique monomers, which has been produced into layered single crystals. Followed by this, the research team boiled the single crystal in an appropriate solvent to split the individual layers and each layer is represented as a two-dimensional polymer. Currently, the size of the single crystals is just 50 µm. Before focusing on practical applications, researchers need to work on the properties of the newly created material.