Construction of semi-fluorinated amphiphilic graft copolymer bearing a poly(2-methyl-1,4-bistrifluorovinyloxybenzene) backbone and poly(ethylene glycol) side chains via the grafting-onto strategy

Abstract

Amphiphilic graft copolymers bearing a hydrophobic poly(2-methyl-1,4-bistrifluorovinyloxybenzene) (PMBTFVB) backbone and hydrophilic poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) side chains were synthesized through the Williamson reaction between the hydroxyl end group of PEG and the pendant benzyl bromide functionality of the backbone introduced through the mono-bromination of the pendant methyls on the backbone by using N-bromosuccinimide and benzoyl peroxide, via the grafting-onto strategy. Critical micelle concentrations (cmc) of these amphiphilic graft copolymers were determined by fluorescence spectroscopy using N-phenyl-1-naphthylamine as a fluorescence probe. The studies on the morphologies of self-assembled aggregates of the resulting PMBTFVB-g-PEG graft copolymers with relatively narrow molecular weight distributions (M_w/M_n = 1.26–1.39) in aqueous solution showed that the observed morphologies were obviously affected by a number of factors including the method used for preparing micelles, the concentration of the copolymer in the cosolvent, and the water content.