Principal Research Interests: We are interested in the design and syntheses of mainly two classes of macromolecules, viz., dendrimers and polymers. The design of these macromolecules is inspired by specific applications that our group is interested in and sometimes by the sheer beauty of the structures that one can generate using organic syntheses as a tool box. The structures that we imagine are often inspired by the intricacies of the nature’s nature macromolecules such as proteins and nucleic acids. Dendrimers, derived from the Greek word dendron (tree), are highly branched molecules that are built using iterative synthetic strategies. One of the most attractive aspects of dendrimers is that these molecules can be built as a pure single molecule even at very high molecular weights. Another interesting aspect of dendrimer is that they become globular at high molecular weights and therefore are useful as supramolecular hosts. We have developed a new design strategy to functionalize the interiors of these globular dendrimers to enhance the versatility of these molecules as hosts. In addition, we have also reported three different synthetic strategies to introduce sequences in dendrimers, i.e. these methodologies afford the capability to vary each monomer unit within a dendron or dendrimer. We are now working on several projects that demonstrate the capabilities of dendrimers in host-guest binding, catalysis, drug delivery, and other biological applications.
2010
Broadening Absorption in Conductive Polymers through Cross-linkable Side Chains in a Nonconjugated Polymer Backbone (with K Krishnamoorthy and S Thayumanavan), Macromolecules (2010)
Novel nonconjugated copolymer precursors containing polymerizable triEDOT and nonpolymerizable diphenyl triEDOT at side chains were...
Charge Mobility in Nonconjugated Dendrons with Charge Transport Functionality in Every Layer (with K Krishnamoorthy, M Thelakkat, and S Thayumanavan), Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters (2010)
Hole-transporting triarylamine units have been incorporated along the periphery of different generations of a benzyl...
Disassembly of Dendritic Micellar Containers Due to Protein Binding (with V Yesilyurt and S Thayumanavan), Journal of the American Chemical Society (2010)
Disassembling a supramolecular assembly and releasing the contents of the assembly in response to a...
Enhancement of anhydrous proton transport by supramolecular nanochannels in comb polymers (with M Thorn, S Christensen, C Versek, A Poe, RC Hayward, MT Tuominen, and S Thayumanavan), Nature Chemistry (2010)
Transporting protons is essential in several biological processes as well as in renewable energy devices,...
Feedback Regulated Drug Delivery Vehicles: Carbon Dioxide Responsive Cationic Hydrogels for Antidote Release (with S Bhat and S Thayumanavan), Biomacromolecules (2010)
A possible approach to handling the harmful side effects of an analgesic overdose, without losing...
2009
Amphiphilicity in Homopolymer Surfaces Reduces Nonspecific Protein Adsorption (with S Thayumanavan), Langmuir (2009)
Amphiphilic homopolymer films have been immobilized onto substrates to study the interactions of these polymers...
Amphiphilic nanoassemblies for the detection of peptides and proteins using fluorescence and mass spectrometry (with A Gomez-Escudero, V Yesilyurt, RW Vachet, and S Thayumanavan), Analyst (2009)
Amphiphilic nanostructures provide unique environments for molecules that are incompatible with the solvent to be...
Dendritic and Linear Macromolecular Architectures for Photovoltaics: A Photoinduced Charge Transfer Investigation (with A Mueller, A Klaikherd, CJ Bardeen, and S Thayumanavan), Journal of the American Chemical Society (2009)
Dendrimers have been previously shown to provide significant advantages in both excited-state energy transfer and...
Enzyme-Triggered Disassembly of Dendrimer-Based Amphiphilic Nanocontainers (with P Sokkalingam and S Thayumanavan), Journal of the Americal Chemical Society (2009)
We demonstrate a new enzyme-induced disassembly of amphiphilic nanocontainers based on dendrimers. Disassembly and the...
Fluorescence Patterns from Supramolecular Polymer Assembly and Disassembly for Sensing Metallo- and Nonmetalloproteins (with EN Savariar and S Thayumanavan), Journal of the American Chemical Society (2009)
Critical aggregation concentration (CAC) of surfactants is lowered when polyelectrolytes act as counterions. At a...
2008
Supramolecular Assemblies of Amphiphilic Homopolymers (with A Klaikherd, B Popere, and S Thayumanavan), Langmuir (2009)
Amphiphilic molecules self-assemble in solvents because of the differential solvation of the hydrophilic and lipophilic...
COLL 127-Tunable disassembly of polymeric micelles using a redox trigger (with S Ghosh and S Thayumanavan), Abstracts of Papers of the American Chemical Society (2008)
Disassembly of noncovalent amphiphilic polymers with proteins and utility in pattern sensing (with S Ghosh, DC Gonzalez, and S Thayumanavan), Journal of the American Chemical Society (2008)
A simple strategy for pattern recognition of proteins through micellar disassembly is introduced. Five different...
Molecular discrimination inside polymer nanotubules (with K Krishnamoorthy and S Thayumanavan), Nature Nanotechnology (2008)
Recognition of small organic molecules and large biomolecules such as proteins is of great importance...
PMSE 196-Separation and identification of peptides utilizing supramolecular polymer assemblies (with A Gomez, EN Savariar, MY Combariza, RW Vachet, and S Thayumanavan), Abstracts of Papers of the American Chemical Society (2008)
2007
A facile method for the synthesis of cleavable block copolymers from ATRP-based homopolymers (with S Ghosh and S Thayumanavan), Macromolecules (2007)
A styrene based water soluble polymer as a reaction medium for photodimerization of aromatic hydrocarbons in water (with DR Vutukuri, S Thayumanavan, and V Ramamurthy), Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology A-Chemistry (2007)
A styrene based water soluble polymer (polymer-A) has been explored as a host for solubilizing...
Controlled functional group presentations in dendrimers as a tool to probe the hyperbranched architecture (with YB Chen and S Thayumanavan), New Journal of Chemistry (2007)
The layer-by-layer incorporation of monomers in the synthesis of dendrimers allows for variations in the...
Fluorescent polyelectrolytes as protein sensors (with BS Sandanaraj, A Klaikherd, and S Thayumanavan), Polymer International (2007)
This review discusses recent advances in protein sensing using fluorescent polyelectrolytes that are mainly water-soluble...
Generating patterns for sensing using a single receptor scaffold (with R Demont and S Thayumanavan), Journal of the American Chemical Society (2007)
A new strategy for generating patterns in sensing is described. Typically, pattern recognition is obtained...
2006
Amphiphilic homopolymers for interaction with proteins (with S Thayumanavan), Abstracts of Papers of the American Chemical Society (2006)
Comparison of facially amphiphilic biaryl dendrimers with classical amphiphilic ones using protein surface recognition as the tool (with BS Sandanaraj, DR Vutukuri, and S Thayumanavan), Journal of the American Chemical Society (2006)
Facially amphiphilic biaryl dendrimers are compared with the more classical benzyl ether amphiphilic dendrimers for...
Dendrimer analogues of linear molecules to evaluate energy and charge-transfer properties (with RR Dasari, TS Ahn, R Al-Kaysi, CJ Bardeen, and S Thayumanavan), Organic Letters (2006)
We have designed and synthesized difunctionalized dendrimers containing two donors in the periphery and an...
Energy and charge transfer dynamics in fully decorated benzyl ether dendrimers and their disubstituted analogues (with A Nantalaksakul, RR Dasari, RO Al-Kaysi, AM Muller, S Thayumanavan, and CJ Bardeen), Journal of Physical Chemistry B (2006)
We examine the photophysics of a series of molecules consisting of a benzthiadiazole core surrounded...
Light harvesting dendrimers (with DR Reddy, CJ Bardeen, and S Thayumanavan), Photosynthesis Research (2006)
2005
Amphiphilic homopolymer as a reaction medium in water: Product selectivity within polymeric nanopockets (with DR Vutukuri, S Thayumanavan, and V Ramamurthy), Journal of the American Chemical Society (2005)
A styrene-based water-soluble polymer has been explored for its use as a host for lipophilic...
Comparison of AB(2) and AB(4) monomers in ferrocene-cored benzyl ether dendrimers (with S Thayumanavan), Tetrahedron (2005)
Dendrimeric micelles for controlled drug release and targeted delivery (with EN Savariar and S Thayumanavan), Molecular Pharmaceutics (2005)
Dependence of the two-photon absorption cross section on the conjugation of the phenylacetylene linker in dipolar donor-bridge-acceptor chromophores (with KRJ Thomas, S Thayumanavan, and CJ Bardeen), Journal of Physical Chemistry A (2005)
Effect of Guest Molecule Flexibility in Access to Dendritic Interiors (with BS Sandanaraj, CG Arges, CJ Bardeen, and S Thayumanavan), Organic Letters (2005)
2004
Controlled polymerization of N-isopropylacrylamide with an activated methacrylic ester (with S Thayumanavan), Journal of Polymer Science Part-A-Polymer Chemistry (2004)
A copolymer of N-isopropylacrylamide with the N-hydroxysuccinimide ester of methacrylic acid has found use in...
Dendrimers based on a three-dimensionally disposed AB(4) monomer (with P Bharathi and S Thayumanavan), Organic Letters (2004)
[reaction: see text] Design and synthesis of a novel class of dendrons based on an...
Dendrimers with both polar and apolar nanocontainer characteristics (with S Basu and S Thayumanavan), Journal of the American Chemical Society (2004)
Amphiphilic dendrimers with a custom-designed biaryl repeat unit have been synthesized. These dendrimers afford hydrophobic...
Design and synthesis of differentially functionalized amphiphilic dendrimer. (with P Bharathi and S Thayumanavan), Abstracts of Papers of the American Chemical Society (2004)
Energy and charge transfer in dendrimers. (with S Thayumanavan), Abstracts of Papers of the American Chemical Society (2004)
2003
Towards dendrimers as biomimetic macromolecules (with P Bharathi, K Sivanandan, and DR Vutukuri), Comptes Rendus Chimie (2003)
Dendrimers can be obtained in precise molecular weights even at high generations. This feature, as...