Cellulose is the most abundant biopolymer in the world and has various unique properties like thermal and mechanical stability and certain chemical properties, i.e. every repeating unit has three hydroxylic groups with different reactivities. Because of these and other reasons cellulose based materials are under investigation until today. The aim of my work is to prepare novel cellulose based hybrid materials with a brush or comb like architecture containing a cellulose backbone and synthetic polymer grafts. The synthesis strategy involves the covalent attachment of polymerisable groups (so called CTAs (chain transfer agent)) onto cellulose. The CTA-groups are immobilized predominantly on the 6-O-position with low DS-Values which leads to limited solubility of these derivatives. Because of this, the remaining hydroxyl groups become modified by aliphatic esters or other chemical species in order to enhance solubility of the cellulosic material in various common organic solvents and makes further homogeneous modifications possible. As a following step, the cellulose derivatives act as a macro-CTA in a controlled radical polymerisation, using monomer, initiator and free sacrificial CTA. If the immobilized CTA groups on the cellulose derivative react in a similar fashion like the CTA groups in solution, it should be possible to generate highly defined cellulose-polymer hybrid materials with tailor made properties.

Defined cellulose-polymer hybrid materials by synthesis under homogeneous reaction conditions

249th National Meeting (2015)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.