A Novel Method for the Synthesis of Amphiphilic Copolymer: PHEMA-b-PDMS-b-PHEMA
In this study, a novel amphiphilic copolymer based on the flexible polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) macroinitiator was successfully prepared by atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP). First, the high molecular weight bis (hydroxyalkyl)-terminated PDMS was prepared by hydrosilation reaction between hydrogen-terminated PDMS and 2-allyloxyethanol in the presence of Karstedt’s catalyst. The macroinitiator Br-PDMS-Br was prepared by the reaction between different molecular weight bis (hydroxyalkyl)-terminated PDMS and 2-bromoisobutyry bromide. Then the amphiphilic ABA-type block copolymers of poly [dimethylsiloxane-b-(hydroxylethyl methacrylate)] were initiated by bromide end-capped PDMS with HEMA, under an appropriate catalyst/ligand system of CuCl/bpy. The polymerization proceeded with first-order kinetics. It showed that the reaction system was a controlled/‘living’ polymerization. The triblock copolymers were characterized by FTIR, 1H-NMR, TGA and GPC techniques. GPC results showed the tribolck copolymer had narrow polydispersity of Mw/Mn (PDI<1.5). TGA results showed the good thermal stability of the triblock copolymer.