Although monodisperse ethylene glycol (EG) oligomers are important in a wide range of applications (ranging from drug therapeutics to materials science and engineering), their cost -especially for longer EG oligomers is often prohibitive. For example, decaethylene, EG 10 , and dodecaethylene, EG 12 , glycols cost hundreds of dollars per gram, and are only available from most vendors, including Sigma-Aldrich, in the polydispersed form. This high-cost is, in large part, due to laborious nature of synthesis and, above all, purification steps involved. Therefore, the motivation of our work was to design a cost-effective route to the EG oligomers that would altogether avoid the column-chromatography purification. This was achieved by a simple synthetic strategy, which combines bidirectional growth of the EG chains with the protection scheme using easy-to-remove trityl groups.Poly(ethylene glycols) (PEGs) are important in a variety of fields including drug therapeutics, 1-5 synthetic chemistry, 6-16 materials science, 17 and engineering. [18][19][20] In pharmacology, attachment (PEG-ylation) of PEG chains to therapeutic drugs (small molecules), 1,8,21 peptides, 21,22 and proteins 22,23 can influence stability, immunogenicity, and pharmacokinetics. 1,21,24 Biologically active molecules that are conjugated to PEG moieties can have higher water solubility and improved bioavailability. The fact that PEGs are nontoxic and biodegradable, and are rapidly excreted after administration, makes these oligomers one of the most popular polymeric carriers for drug molecules.Despite advances in PEG applications, PEG-ylated biopharmaceuticals continue to hold challenges in siteselectivity 25,26 and polydispersity. 27 The former issue has been partly addressed by the incorporation of chemoselective linkers into protein therapeutics using native chemical ligation. 11,13 The preparation of discrete ethylene glycol (EG) oligomers, however, remains a synthetic challenge and is a motivation of the present work.Although monodispersed di-and tetra(ethylene glycol)s are both inexpensive, higher order discrete EG oligomers are often 10-1000-fold more expensive and in some cases not commercially available in gram quantities. Hexa(ethylene glycol) (EG 6 ), for example, can be purchased from Sigma-Aldrich for approximately $10/gram. In comparison, tetra-and di(ethylene glycol)s can be purchased from the same company for less than $20/kilogram. Longer EG oligomers, namely deca-and dodeca(ethylene glycol)s (EG 10 and EG 12 , respectively), however, are prohibitively more expensive (TCI American: EG 10 : $360/gram) and are only available from most vendors, including SigmaAldrich, in the polydispersed form. Herein, we describe an efficient, multigram preparation for higher order (EG 6 , EG 10 , and EG 12 ) discrete EG oligomers that does not require traditional column chromatography purification. It is our hope that this route will allow academic research groups access to gram quantities of affordable monodispersed EG oligomers.Due to the high demand ...