Synthesis And Characterization Of Linear, Dendritic, And Hyperbranched Polymers, And Graft Copolymer

It is well known that the properties of polymers are strongly influenced by their chain architecture. Polymers with narrow molecular weight distribution, homogeneous composition distribution and with well-defined architecture are essential for establishing structure/properties relationship. The design of macromolecules is important for obtaining the polymer materials with predetermined properties. In the past few decades, most of our fundamental understanding of polymers was gained from the investigation of well-defined and nearly monodisperse linear diblock and, to a lesser extent, triblock copolymers. However, very little is known about the influence of chain architectures on properties until now probably due to the synthetic difficulties of well-defined nonlinear polymeric materials with special architecture. Controlling polymer properties through design and synthesis of copolymers and macromolecular architectures is a challenging theme for polymer chemistry. For studying the relationship between the architecture and properties of polymers, and further designing the polymers with predetermined properties, it is necessary to apply known polymerization mechanism to synthesize all kinds of polymer with special architecture.Recent attention has focused on nonlinear architectures such as star-shaped polymers including miktorarm and block coplymers, graft copolymers, dentrimers, hyperbranch polymers, due to their unique properties. For example, dendrimer-like copolymers have potential applications in many fields, such as catalysis, drug delivery and biomimetics. Hyperbranched polymers have been successfully immobilized onto the surface of Au and silicon wafer for a number of technical applications, including corrosion inhibition and chemical sensors. All these facts are the origin and impetuses of this thesis. The main results obtained in this thesis are as follows:1. The hydroxyl terminated polymers, HOPStBr, and diblock copolymers, HOPSt-b-PMMA, were prepared using bifunctional initiator β-hydroxylethyl α-bromoisobutyrate in atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) system. Those (co)polymers were used as chain transfer agent in the ring-opening polymerization (ROP)...