Well-defined epoxide-containing styrenic polymers and their functionalization with alcohols

Polymers containing electrophilic moieties, such as activated esters, epoxides, and alkyl halides, can be readily modified with a variety of nucleophiles to produce useful functional materials. The modification of epoxide-containing polymers with amines and other strong nucleophiles is well-documented, but there are no reports on the modification of such polymers with alcohols. Using phenyloxirane and glycidyl butyrate as low molecular weight model compounds, it was determined that the acid-catalyzed ring-opening of aryl-substituted epoxides by alcohols to form β-hydroxy ether products was significantly more efficient than that of alkyl-substituted epoxides. An aryl epoxide-type styrenic monomer, 4-vinylphenyloxirane (4VPO), was synthesized in high yield using an improved procedure and then polymerized in a controlled manner under reversible addition-fragmentation chain-transfer (RAFT) polymerization conditions. A successful chain extension with styrene proved the high degree of chain-end functionalization of the poly4VPO-based macro chain transfer agent. Poly4VPO was modified with a library of alcohols and phenols, some of which contained reactive functionalities, e.g., azide, alkyne, allyl, etc., using either CBr4 (in PhCN at 90 °C for 2–3 days) or BF3 (in CH2Cl2 at ambient temperature over 30 min) as the catalyst. The resulting β-hydroxy ether-functionalized homopolymers were characterized using size exclusion chromatography, 1H NMR and IR spectroscopy, and thermal gravimetric analysis. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2016, 54, 1132–1144