Synthesis of arborescent styrene homopolymers and copolymers from epoxidized substrates |
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Authors: | Firmin Moingeon Yan Rong Wu Lorena Eugenia Cadena‐Sánchez Mario Gauthier |
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Institution: | Institute for Polymer Research, Department of Chemistry, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada |
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Abstract: | The synthesis of arborescent styrenic homopolymers and copolymers was achieved by anionic polymerization and grafting. Styrene and p‐(3‐butenyl)styrene were first copolymerized using sec‐butyllithium in toluene, to generate a linear copolymer with a weight‐average molecular weight Mw = 4000 and Mw/Mn = 1.05. The pendant double bonds of the copolymer were then epoxidized with m‐chloroperbenzoic acid. A comb‐branched (or arborescent generation G0) copolymer was obtained by coupling the epoxidized substrate with living styrene‐p‐(3‐butenyl)styrene copolymer chains with Mw ≈ 5000 in a toluene/tetrahydrofuran mixture. Further cycles of epoxidation and coupling reactions while maintaining Mw ≈ 5000 for the side chains yielded arborescent copolymers of generations G1–G3. A series of arborescent styrene homopolymers was also obtained by grafting Mw ≈ 5000 polystyrene side chains onto the linear and G0–G2 copolymer substrates. Size exclusion chromatography measurements showed that the graft polymers have low polydispersity indices (Mw/Mn = 1.02–1.15) and molecular weights increasing geometrically over successive generations. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem, 2012 |
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Keywords: | anionic polymerization arborescent polymers dendrigraft polymers graft polymers polystyrene |
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