Water-soluble and hydrolysis-resistant activated ester polymers: Synthesis, characterization, and application for preparing functional polymers

Abstract

Post-polymerization modification of pendant-activated ester groups on polymer backbones is a versatile tool to obtain multifunctional water-soluble polymers that cannot be synthesized by typical methods of polymerization. For the first time, short-chain PEG functionalized hydroxybenzoic acid esters (PHBE) were employed to synthesize novel monomers and polymers. The corresponding PHBE-bearing polymers were successfully synthesized for post-polymerization modification by free radical polymerization. More significantly, acrylic PEG functionalized hydroxybenzoic acid esters polymers showed traceless hydrolysis at room temperature for more than 10 days. Furthermore, the multifunctional PHBE-bearing polymers could be directly conjugated to water-soluble amines in water at room temperature. Therefore, this procedure provides an alternative route to well-defined, multifunctional, water-soluble polymers for a range of applications.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Activated ester
• water-soluble polymers
• hydrolysis-resistant
• amino acid
• post-polymerization modification

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Yanping Huang from Center of Engineering Experimental Teaching, School of Chemical Engineering, Sichuan University for the help of TEM image and NMR measurement.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by Technology of Sichuan Province under grant No. 2022YFN0060, Technology of Shandong Province under grant No.2022CXGC010509; Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under YJ202117 and State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering (SCU) under grant No. sklpme2020-3-03 and No. sklpme2020-3-14.