Thermally amendable tailor‐made acrylate copolymers via RAFT polymerization and ultrafast alder‐ene “click” chemistry

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis investigation reports the preparation of thermally amendable copolymers of 2‐hydroxyethylmethacrylate (HEMA) with methyl methacrylate (MMA) and butyl methacrylate (BMA) via reversible addition fragmentation chain‐transfer (RAFT) polymerization followed by Alder‐ene reaction. The chemical compositions and molecular weights of the copolymers were determined via 1H NMR and gel‐permeation chromatography (GPC) analyses. The hydroxyl groups of PHEMA in the copolymer were modified to incorporate indole functional group, which was further modified via an ultrafast Alder‐ene reaction using a bifunctional 1,2,4‐triazoline‐3,5‐dione (TAD) derivative. The thermoreversible character of the resultant crosslinked network was studied via differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and FT‐IR analyses. Different microscopic analyses were performed to study the self‐healing property and self‐healing efficiency of the crosslinked network. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2018, 56, 2310–2318