The article titled, "DOSY H NMR as an Accessible Technique for Characterizing Trends in Bottlebrush Polymer Molecular Weight" was published January 6th, 2026 in Journal of Macromolecules. This paper was co-authored by Connor L. Witt*, Brandon R. Clarke,* Kyoungwon Lee*, Gabrielle Ho, Thomas P. Russell*, Todd Emrick*, James J. Watkins*, Gregory N. Tew*, and Weiguo Hu*.
Bottlebrush polymers and copolymers are a fascinating class of macromolecules, but their nontraditional architecture can make determining their molecular weight challenging. In this work, we utilized diffusion ordered spectroscopy (DOSY) and related the observed hydrodynamic radii to the samples' absolute molecular weights, showing differences in behavior due to polymer architecture. We importantly showed that DOSY can provide a reliable "calibration curve" for a given polymer architecture, providing an accessible way to characterize this type of polymer.