SYNTHESIS BY LIVING IONIC PROCESSES, SURFACE FUNCIONALIZATION AND PROPERTIES OF REGULEAR UNIMOLECULAR NANOPARTICLES

With the aim to develop specific properties required for new applications, an intense research activity is presently devoted to the design and study of polymers with well-controlled chain parameters and special chain topology of increasing complexity. One important domain concerns the design of functional hyper branched polymers which can fill the gap between low molar masses dendrimers and micrometric polymer particles. One route for the synthesis of hyper branched polymer that we have recently developed consists in assembling, through polymer analogous reactions, macromolecular building blocks of controlled structure and dimensions. This procedure is based on the successive and repeated interconnection of poly(chloroethyl vinyl ether) backbones and polystyrene or polybutadiene elementary blocks, prepared by living type polymerizations in order to control their dimensions and functionality. The covalent link between the elementary blocks is achieved by the selective coupling of living carbanionic polymers and the chloroethyl ether functions of the poly(chloroethyl vinyl ether) units. This strategy allows the preparation of monodispersed hyper-branched molecular objects with narrow polydisperity (<1,2) and controlled molar masses (up to several hundred millions), size (from ten to two hundred nanometers). Shape and surface functionality (hydroxy-, carboxy-, cationically and anionically charged, etc).
The synthesis of these nanometric objects of persistant shape as well as some of their specific properties in the bulk and in solution will be presented.