Synthesis of Poly(Methyl Methacrylate)-Based Polyrotaxane via Reversible Addition-Fragmentation Chain Transfer Polymerization

Yu-Cheng Wang; Rina Maeda; Gergely Kali; Hideaki Yokoyama; Gerhard Wenz; Kohzo Ito

doi:10.1021/acsmacrolett.0c00648

Synthesis of Poly(Methyl Methacrylate)-Based Polyrotaxane via Reversible Addition-Fragmentation Chain Transfer Polymerization

ACS Macro Lett. 2020 Dec 15;9(12):1853-1857. doi: 10.1021/acsmacrolett.0c00648. Epub 2020 Dec 7.

Authors

Yu-Cheng Wang¹, Rina Maeda¹, Gergely Kali², Hideaki Yokoyama¹, Gerhard Wenz³, Kohzo Ito¹

Affiliations

¹ Material Innovation Research Center (MIRC) and Department of Advanced Materials Science, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, University of Tokyo, 5-1-5 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-8561, Japan.
² Center for Chemistry and Biomedicine, Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Institute of Pharmacy, University of Innsbruck, Innrain 80-82, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria.
³ Organic Macromolecular Chemistry, Saarland University, Campus Saarbrü cken C 4.2, 66123 Saarbrü cken, Germany.

PMID: 35653687
DOI: 10.1021/acsmacrolett.0c00648

Abstract

A polyrotaxane (PR) with poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) as the main chain polymer was prepared via reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization. Because of the special mechanism of RAFT, the suprastructure of a PMMA-based PR is established by synthesizing inclusion complexes of methyl methacrylate and gamma-cyclodextrin (γCD) into the middle of the poly-N-(3-dimethylamino) propyl methacrylamide segments. The presence of threaded γCD was determined via diffusion ordered spectroscopy from the alignment of the mobility of γCD and the main chain polymer. A PMMA-based PR with 2-20% CD coverage and a molecular weight of 7K-60K g/mol of PMMA-based PR was synthesized with a targeted molecular structure by mediating the RAFT polymerization. The PMMA-based PR prepared in this study is expected to be suitable for wide applications of tough materials with good heat resistance. Moreover, the investigation of this synthetical approach opened possibilities for more variety of PR with controllable properties.