It had very long been a dream in polymer science to synthesize long multi-block polymer chains with an ordered chain sequence and controllable block lengths. Using ionic or living free radical polymerization or furnishing each end of polymer blocks with a reactive functional group, one can only prepare heteropolymer chains with few long blocks, such as diblock and triblock copolymers. The most plausible result so far was a pentablock copolymer. Recently, using a combination of polymer physics and synthetic chemistry, we have invented self-assembly assisted polycondensation (SAAP). This communication reports the results of using this novel method to connect 10-100 triblock polymer chains together to form long multi-block heteropolymer chains with an ordered sequence and controllable block lengths.
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