A facile metal-free “grafting-from” route from acrylamide-based substrate toward complex macromolecular combs

Abstract

High-molecular-weight poly(N,N-dimethylacrylamide-co-acrylamide) was used as a model functional substrate to investigate phosphazene base (t-BuP₄)-promoted metal-free anionic graft polymerization utilizing primary amide moieties as initiating sites. The (co)polymerization of epoxides was proven to be effective, leading to macromolecular combs with side chains being single- or double-graft homopolymer, block copolymer and statistical copolymer.