Département de chimie moléculaire

Despite their importance for material and life sciences, multivalent interactions between polymers and surfaces remain poorly understood. Combining recent achievements of synthetic chem. and surface characterization, we have developed a well-defined and highly specific model system based on host/guest interactions. We use this model to study the binding of hyaluronic acid functionalized with host mols. to tunable surfaces displaying different densities of guest mols. Remarkably, we find that the surface d. of bound polymer increases faster than linearly with the surface d. of binding sites. Based on predictions from a simple anal. model, we propose that this superselective behavior arises from a combination of enthalpic and entropic effects upon binding of nanoobjects to surfaces, accentuated by the ability of polymer chains to interpenetrate. [on SciFinder(R)]