Over the past 12 years, numerous papers discussing the grafting of a range of various cellulose substrates by controlled radical polymerizations, such as atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) and reversible-addition fragmentation chain-transfer (RAFT), have been published since the first paper on this subject by Malmström et al.1,2 The field of controlled radical polymerizations is evolving and recently Haddleton et al. showed that ATRP can be induced by UV-light.3 Inspired by this work, we utilized the same system for the modification of cellulose surfaces. Methyl acrylate was polymerized from the surface of filter paper utilizing UV-induced ATRP. The polymerization resulted in large amounts of grafted PMA from the paper already after 90 minutes of polymerization, as shown by FTIR and SEM. By employing a cleavable ATRP-initiator the polymer grafts were cleaved from the surface and separately analyzed by SEC and the results showed that the polymer had fairly narrow dispersities and that the molar mass of the chains could be controlled. In another part of the work and in order to increase the functionality of the grafting, α-chloro-ε-caprolactone (αCleCL) was copolymerized with e-caprolactone (e-CL) from the filter paper employing surface-initiated ring opening polymerization. In a graft-on-graft approach, the chloride-functions on the grafted P(αCleCL-b-e-CL) were subsequently utilized as initiators for the UV-induced ATRP grafting of di(ethylene glycol) ethyl ether acrylate (DEGA). The grafted PDEGA chains rendered the paper thermoresponsive, giving rise to a complete adsorption of a water drop at low temperature and increasing hydrophobicity when the temperature was raised. 1) A. Carlmark, E. Malmström, E. J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2002, 124(6), 900-901 2) E. Malmström, A. Carlmark, A. Polym. Chem., 2012, 3 (7), 1702 – 1713 3) A. Anastasaki, V: Nikolaou, Q. Zhang, J. Burns, S. R. Samanta, C. Waldron, A. J. Haddleton, R: McHale, D. Fox, V. Percec, P. Wilson, D. M. Haddleton, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2014, 136 (3), 1141-1149

Versatile modification of cellulose by UV-induced surface-initiated ATRP

249th National Meeting (2015)

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