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Synthesis of Flower‐Like Polybutadiene
Author(s) -
Nicol Erwan,
Nzé RenéPonce,
Kaewbuddee Suwat,
Gaillard Cédric,
Carlotti Stéphane
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
macromolecular chemistry and physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.57
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1521-3935
pISSN - 1022-1352
DOI - 10.1002/macp.201700028
Subject(s) - polybutadiene , copolymer , polymer chemistry , polymerization , dynamic light scattering , acrylate , micelle , chemistry , materials science , polymer , organic chemistry , aqueous solution , nanoparticle , nanotechnology
Synthesis of complex macromolecular architectures exhibiting no chain ends such as flower‐like polymers is still of interest in the aim of investigating their physicochemical properties. For this purpose, poly(3,4‐dimethyl maleic imidoethyl acrylate)‐ block ‐polybutadiene‐ block ‐poly(3,4‐dimethyl maleic imidoethyl acrylate) triblock copolymer is synthesized in a convergent manner using a combination of living polymerization (anionic polymerization), reversible deactivation radical polymerization, and click chemistry. This copolymer is self‐assembled in a selective solvent (heptane/THF mixture) of the polybutadiene block leading to the formation of flower‐like micelles in thermodynamic equilibrium in dilute solution. These resulting transient architectures are fixed by covalently crosslinking the micelles core by inducing [2+2] cyclodimerization of the 3,4‐dimethyl maleic imidoethyl groups borne by the short solvophobic blocks under UV irradiation. Single flowers are isolated from residual non‐crosslinked chains by semipreparative size exclusion chromatography (SEC) and characterized by 1 H NMR, SEC, dynamic light scattering (DLS), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM).