Application of living ionic polymerizations to the design of AB-type comb-like copolymers of various topologies and organizations

Abstract

Living anionic and cationic polymerizations have been combined to prepare various types of comb-like copolymers composed of polystyrene (PS) and polyisoprene (PI) blocks, with a precisely controlled architecture. According to the relative placement of these elementary building blocks, combs with randomly distributed PS and PI or with poly(styrene-b-isoprene) diblock branches (I &II, respectively) can be prepared. The reaction procedure initially includes the synthesis of a poly(chloroethylvinyl ether) using living cationic polymerization, which is used as the reactive backbone to successively graft PS-Li+ and PI-Li+ or PI-b-PS-Li+ to obtain structures (I) or (II). The synthesis of Janus-type PS-comb-b-PI-combs (III) initially involves the synthesis of a diblock backbone using living cationic polymerization, which bears two distinct reactive functions having either a protected or activated form. Living PS-Li+ and PI-Li+ are then grafted, in two separate steps, onto each of the reactive functions of the backbone, respectively.