In the last years, the preparation of novel nanocomposites based on polymers and metal nanoparticles (AuNPs and AgNPs) has attracted the attention of the scientific community. This is due to their potential applications in fields such as sensing, medical therapy or catalysis, among others.

In literature, several examples for the preparation of nanocomposites can be found where the organic coating is composed by biomacromolecules with helical structure such as DNA or proteins but nanocomposites with synthetic helical polymers as coating remain still unexplored. For this reason, poly(phenylacetylene)s (PPAs), which are a type of synthetic helical polymers, are an excellent candidates to act as organic coatings for metal nanoparticles. PPAs present the ability of modulate its secondary structure —helical sense and elongation— in the presence of different external stimuli (e.g.: temperature, metal ions, light, etc.).

In this work, the preparation of novel nanocomposites based on PPA-AgNPs is reported. For that, meta- and orto- substituted PPAs derived from (R)-a-methoxy-a-phenylacetic acid as poendat group (poly-1 and poly-2 respectively) were selected as organic coating for the silver nanoparticles. The differences in the elongation and dynamic behaviour between poly-1 and poly-2 allowed to study the influence of the secondary structure in the formation of poly-1-AgNPs and poly-2-AgNPs nanocomposites.