Effect of hydrogen bonding on single polymer growth

We investigated the effect of hydrogen bonding on the dynamics and kinetics of single polymer growth using magnetic tweezers. In the previous study, it was found that, during single polymer growth, nonequilibrium polymer entanglements were formed and unraveled due to the intra-chain van der Waals force, and the microstructure of the entanglements was found to affect the apparent chain propagation rate. To demonstrate how the intra-chain interactions affect the chain propagation rate, we introduced hydroxyl-functionalized monomers and studied the effect of the hydrogen bonding on the chain propagation rate. The results showed that the chain propagation rate first decrease and then increase with increasing hydroxyl-functionalized monomer ratio unexpectedly. This phenomenon can be explained by the competition between the intra-chain hydrogen bond and the inter-molecular hydrogen bond between polymer and free monomers in solution.