Application of Living Ionic Polymerizations to the Design of AB-Type Comb-like Copolymers of Various Topologies and Organizations

Living anionic and cationic polymerizations have been combined to prepare various types of comb-like copolymers composed of polystyrene (PS) and polyisoprene (PI) blocks, with a precisely controlled architecture. According to the relative placement of these elementary building blocks, combs with randomly distributed PS and PI or with poly(styrene-b-isoprene) diblock branches (I & II, respectively) can be prepared. The reaction procedure initially includes the synthesis of a poly(chloroethylvinyl ether) using living cationic polymerization, which is used as the reactive backbone to successively graft $PS^-Li^+$ and $PI^-Li^+$ or $PI-b-PS^-Li^+$ to obtain structures (I) or (II). The synthesis of Janus-type PS-comb-b-PI-combs (III) initially involves the synthesis of a diblock backbone using living cationic polymerization, which bears two distinct reactive functions having either a protected or activated form. Living $PS^-Li^+$ and $PI^-Li^+$ are then grafted, in two separate steps, onto each of the reactive functions of the backbone, respectively.