Issue 1, 2012
From the journal:

Polymer Chemistry

End-linked, amphiphilic, degradable polymer conetworks: synthesis by sequential atom transfer radical polymerization using a bifunctional, cleavable initiator

Maria Rikkou-Kalourkoti,a   Elena Loizou,a   Lionel Porcar,b   Krzysztof Matyjaszewskic  and  Costas S. Patrickios*a  

* Corresponding authors

a Department of Chemistry, University of Cyprus, P. O. Box 20537, Nicosia, Cyprus
E-mail: chp5mr1@ucy.ac.cy, elenaloizou@gmail.com, costasp@ucy.ac.cy

b Institut Laue-Langevin, B. P. 156, Grenoble Cedex 9, France
E-mail: porcar@ill.fr

c Department of Chemistry, Carnegie Mellon University, 4400 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
E-mail: km3b@andrew.cmu.edu

Abstract

End-linked, degradable, amphiphilic polymer conetworks (APCNs) of various compositions and architectures were synthesized by sequential atom transfer radical terpolymerization of monomers and cross-linker using a cleavable, bifunctional initiator, bearing two acid-labile hemiacetal ester groups. The incorporation of the initiator residue into the conetworks rendered them cleavable in the middle of their elastic polymer chains. The temporal evolution of the swollen mass of the conetworks in acidified THF–water mixtures was studied and it was determined that the APCNhydrolysis rates were dependent on both conetwork composition and architecture. Regarding the former, hydrophobic APCNs degraded slowly or they even did not dissolve at all. Regarding the latter, conetworks with hydrophobic monomer and hydrophobic cross-linker units distributed around the initiator fragment also dissolved more slowly or they did not degrade at all. Finally, characterization of the star copolymers, produced from conetwork hydrolysis, allowed the determination of the APCN core functionality to be around 30.

Graphical abstract: End-linked, amphiphilic, degradable polymer conetworks: synthesis by sequential atom transfer radical polymerization using a bifunctional, cleavable initiator

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Article information

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1039/C1PY00349F
Article type
Paper
Submitted
04 Aug 2011
Accepted
13 Sep 2011
First published
19 Oct 2011

Polym. Chem., 2012,3, 105-116

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End-linked, amphiphilic, degradable polymer conetworks: synthesis by sequential atom transfer radical polymerization using a bifunctional, cleavable initiator

M. Rikkou-Kalourkoti, E. Loizou, L. Porcar, K. Matyjaszewski and C. S. Patrickios, Polym. Chem., 2012, 3, 105 DOI: 10.1039/C1PY00349F

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