Organocatalytic ring-opening polymerization approach to fully degradable amphiphilic copolymers

POLY 277

Kazuki Fukushima, kazukifu@us.ibm.com1, Russell C. Pratt, rcpratt@us.ibm.com1, Fredrik Nederberg, fredrikn@us.ibm.com1, Robert M. Waymouth, waymouth@stanford.edu2, and James L. Hedrick, hedrick@almaden.ibm.com1. (1) IBM Almaden Research Center, 650 Harry Road, San Jose, CA 95120, (2) Department of Chemistry, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
Organocatalytic ring-opening polymerization (ROP) initiated from a macroinitiator, poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) enables amphiphilic block copolymers with different functionalities by employing cyclic carbonates derived from 2,2-bis(methylol)propionic acid (bis-MPA) on the ROP monomers for the construction of hydrophobic blocks. The copolymerization of two carbonate monomers based on bis-MPA allows uniform distribution of functional groups in the hydrophobic block, while copolymerizations with the typical cyclic carbonate monomer, trimethylene carbonate (TMC) induce gradient copolymers. These functionalized polycarbonate-PEG block copolymers promise a wide range of applications to biomedical devices due to the biodegradability of aliphatic polycarbonate backbone and the biocompatibility of bis-MPA.