Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

The liquid-liquid interface provides a promising platform to construct supramolecular polymers and materials with advanced functions. However, supramolecular polymerization at the interface usually requires monomers with different or even orthogonal solubilities, which significantly limit the number of usable monomers. Here, we report a new strategy to construct supramolecular polymer networks at the oil-water interface using a water-soluble catechol-iron complex and an oil-soluble diend-functionalized polymer. Owing to the dynamic catechol-iron coordination bond and imine bond, the resulting supramolecular polymer networks demonstrate excellent dynamic features and responsiveness to different stimuli including the pH, redox, competing ligands, and temperature. With a supramolecular polymer network serving as a building block, emulsions and 2D films can be generated that have potential applications in encapsulation, release, and molecular separation.