ArticleNature chemistry2024
Mechanical scission of a knotted polymer.
Article in Nature chemistry, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 44 citations in OpenAlex.
- Trefoil polymers from a knotted synthon.Nature chemistry · 2026Article
- Forces in mechanically interlocked materials.Chemical Society reviews · 2026Review
- Toughening elastomer via sequentially activated multi-pathway energy dissipation.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Mechanochemical disassembly pathways of self-assembled polymer-decorated PdNature communications · 2026Article
- Generating knotted polymer and protein structures by machine learning.Communications chemistry · 2026Article
- Role of Molecular Topology Elucidated in Unified Gels.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2026Article
- Transmission Electron Microscopy for Structural Insights into Bacterial Cellulose Nanowhiskers in Ternary Deep Eutectic Solvent.ACS measurement science au · 2026Article
- Single-molecule magnetic tweezers reveal distinct dynamics and enhanced mechanical stability of ssDNA 31 and 52 knots.Nucleic acids research · 2026Article
- Template-Controlled Mechanochemical Dissociation of a Rotaxane.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2026Article
- Design and Structural Transformations of Zinc(II) Knotted Cage Frameworks.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2025Article
- Force-Induced Ring Flipping in a Threaded Pillar[5]Arene.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2025Article
- Selective Scission of Orthogonal Bonds in Four-Membered Ring Mechanophores upon Activation by a Rotaxane Actuator.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2025Article
- Logic-Gated Release of a Dual Payload from a β-Lactam Mechanophore with a Rotaxane Actuator.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2025Article
- Energy Landscapes of Model Knotted Polymers.Journal of chemical theory and computation · 2025Article
- Biphasic mechanochemistry of single-chain polymerization.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Diverse reactivity of maleimides in polymer science and beyond.Polymer international · 2025Article
- Synthesis of covalently linked knotted cage frameworks.Nature synthesis · 2025Article
- Folding a Molecular Strand into a Trefoil Knot of Single Handedness with Co(II)/Co(III) Chaperones.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2024Article
- Mechanical scission of a knotted polymer.Nature chemistry · 2024Article
- Enhancement of Thermal Management Performance of Copper Foil Using Additive-Free Graphene Coating.Polymers · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Molecular knots and entanglements form randomly and spontaneously in both biological and synthetic polymer chains. It is known that macroscopic materials, such as ropes, are substantially weakened by the presence of knots, but until now it has been unclear whether similar behaviour occurs on a molecular level. Here we show that the presence of a well-defined overhand knot in a polymer chain substantially increases the rate of scission of the polymer under tension (≥2.6× faster) in solution, because deformation of the polymer backbone induced by the tightening knot activates otherwise unreactive covalent bonds. The fragments formed upon severing of the knotted chain differ from those that arise from cleavage of a similar, but unknotted, polymer. Our solution studies provide experimental evidence that knotting can contribute to higher mechanical scission rates of polymers. It also demonstrates that entanglement design can be used to generate mechanophores that are among the most reactive described to date, providing opportunities to increase the reactivity of otherwise inert functional groups.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.