Synthesis of High‐Molar Mass Arborescent‐Branched Polyglycidol via Sequential Grafting

Abstract

A multiple grafting technique was used to synthesize arborescent-branched high-molecular mass poly(2,3-epoxypropan-1-ol). In the first step, linear polyglycidol (Mn = 10 300) was obtained. Some of the hydroxyl groups were transformed into alcoholate anions in a reaction with potassium tert-butoxide, and the obtained polyanion was used to initiate the polymerization of 1-ethoxyethyl glycidyl ether, the glycidol having a protected hydroxyl group. Removing the protecting groups yielded polyglycidol-graft-polyglycidol. This procedure was repeated twice to give three generations of comb-burst branched polyglycidol chains with Mn of 8.2×104, 7.4×105 and 1.8×106.