Conformational Properties of Optically Active Stereoregular Polymers

Abstract

Abstract The relationship between configuration and conformation of Stereoregular polymers is reviewed. The reason for the frequent occurrence of helical conformations in the solid state is discussed, as well as the difficulties encountered in the experimental investigation of the conformational equilibrium of macromolecules in solution. As far as the local conformation of the repeat units of polymers in solution is concerned, satisfactory information is available only in the case of isotactic poly(α-olefins). This is mostly due to the successful combination of statistical mechanical calculations and experimental measurements of optical activity in isotactic poly(α-olefins) containing asymmetric carbon atoms in the lateral chain. In this case optical activity measurements provide a demonstration of the existence of the short range helical order in solution. It is further shown that a series of independent experiments (including some recent end-to-end distance measurements) confirm the detailed picture of ...