Two original Chain Transfer Agents (CTAs) integrating either a nitrocatechol or a boronic acid moiety were synthesized allowing the conception of a wide library of end-functionalized well-defined homopolymers via the Reversible Addition-Fragmentation chain Transfer (RAFT) process. Kinetic studies using NMR spectroscopy and Size Exclusion Chromatography (SEC) were carried out, revealing a good control of polymerizations for various monomers. Then, a coupling reaction between the complementary nitrocatechol and boronic acid end-chain polymers was optimized to create a dynamic boronate ester junction between polymer blocks. The effectiveness of the reaction was demonstrated by means of NMR ( 1 H, DOSY), SEC and cyclic voltammetry. The ability of the covalent bond, and thus the block copolymers, to be disrupted on demand was assessed using a competitive molecule (2-naphthylboronic acid) and UV irradiation as stimuli. Figure 3. A) Kinetic plots and B) dependence of the molar mass and polydispersity index on monomer conversion for the RAFT polymerization involving ND-CTA (see Table 1 for experimental conditions).After the obtention of well-defined homopolymers bearing either a nitrocatechol moiety (ND-Polymer) or a boronic acid group (Boro-Polymer) at their extremity, we next turned our attention to whether they can be readily connected through the boronate ester formation to furnish diblock copolymer architectures. This was exemplified by mixing two complementary end-functionalized homopolymers, ND-PDMAc (M n,NMR =1700 g.mol -1 , Ð=1.2) and Boro-PnBuA (M n,NMR =2000 g.mol -1 , Ð=1.1), in acetonitrile under reflux for 24 hours. The block copolymer PDMAc-b-PnBuA was recovered after purification through dialysis (MWCO = 3500 g/mol) in acetonitrile and then characterized by 1 H NMR spectroscopy. First, we tried to perform the coupling reaction from an equimolar amount of each polymer in acetonitrile for 24h. After dialysis, 1 H NMR analysis revealed the presence of the pure block copolymer in the dialysis bag and traces of both starting homopolymers in the filtrate, suggesting that the reaction was not quantitative. Thus, to ensure a complete reaction, 2 equivalents of Boro-PnBuA and 1 equivalent of ND-PDMAc were next reacted in similar reaction conditions. In that case, no trace of unreacted ND-PDMAc was detected in the filtrate after purification. linked block copolymer (1 equivalent). Indeed, it has already been demonstrated that NBA displays a much lower fluorescence intensity in organic medium once bounded to diols. 65 Thus, this trend has been exploited to monitor the disassembly of a block copolymer PDMAcb-PnBuA (Scheme 3).
Scheme 3. Reaction between NBA and ND-PDMAc (Pathway 1) and PDMAc-b-PnBuA (Pathway 2).On Figure 8, the typical emission spectrum of NBA is presented while the block copolymer PDMAc-b-PnBuA exhibits no fluorescence. On the other hand, when the homopolymer ND-PDMAc is directly coupled with NBA (pathway 1, Scheme 3), the resulting functionalized NBA-PDMAc is less fluorescent than NBA alone, as d...