Precise Synthesis of Macromolecular Architectures by Novel Iterative Methodology Combining Living Anionic Polymerization with Specially Designed Linking Chemistry

Raita Goseki; Shotaro Ito; Yuri Matsuo; Tomoya Higashihara; Akira Hirao

doi:10.3390/polym9100470

Precise Synthesis of Macromolecular Architectures by Novel Iterative Methodology Combining Living Anionic Polymerization with Specially Designed Linking Chemistry

Polymers (Basel). 2017 Sep 25;9(10):470. doi: 10.3390/polym9100470.

Authors

Raita Goseki^{1

2}, Shotaro Ito³, Yuri Matsuo⁴, Tomoya Higashihara⁵, Akira Hirao^{6

7

8}

Affiliations

¹ Polymeric and Organic Materials Department, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1, Ohokayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152-8552, Japan. rgoseki@polymer.titech.ac.jp.
² Department of Chemical Science and Engineering, School of Materials Chemistry and Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1, Ohokayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152-8552, Japan. rgoseki@polymer.titech.ac.jp.
³ Polymeric and Organic Materials Department, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1, Ohokayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152-8552, Japan. sito@polymer.titech.ac.jp.
⁴ Polymeric and Organic Materials Department, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1, Ohokayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152-8552, Japan. ymatsuo@polymer.titech.ac.jp.
⁵ Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Yamagata University, 4-3-16 Jonan, Yonezawa, Yamagata 992-8510, Japan. thigashihara@yz.yamagata-u.ac.jp.
⁶ Polymeric and Organic Materials Department, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1, Ohokayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152-8552, Japan. ahirao@email.plala.or.jp.
⁷ Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan. ahirao@email.plala.or.jp.
⁸ Department of Applied Chemistry, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan. ahirao@email.plala.or.jp.

Abstract

This article reviews the development of a novel all-around iterative methodology combining living anionic polymerization with specially designed linking chemistry for macromolecular architecture syntheses. The methodology is designed in such a way that the same reaction site is always regenerated after the polymer chain is introduced in each reaction sequence, and this "polymer chain introduction and regeneration of the same reaction site" sequence is repeatable. Accordingly, the polymer chain can be successively and, in principle, limitlessly introduced to construct macromolecular architectures. With this iterative methodology, a variety of synthetically difficult macromolecular architectures, i.e., multicomponent μ-star polymers, high generation dendrimer-like hyperbranched polymers, exactly defined graft polymers, and multiblock polymers having more than three blocks, were successfully synthesized.

Keywords: benzyl bromide; exactly defined graft polymers; high generation dendrimer-like hyperbranched polymer; iterative methodology; linking chemistry; living anionic polymerization; multiblock polymers; α-phenylacrylate; μ-star polymer.

Publication types

Review