The use of click chemistry had become an important tool in the conjugation of polymeric materials owing to the high efficiency of the coupling reactions as well as reasonable functional group tolerance. These synthetic tools have lowered the synthetic barrier to preparing and studying polymer materials of complex architecture. Among these click reactions, the copper-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition remains one of the more frequently used due to its broad compatibility. The extremely rapid coupling reaction has enabled the synthesis of architectures that have traditionally proved difficult to prepare in high purity, including cyclic polymers, star polymers, graft polymers, etc. A particularly attractive feature of this chemistry is the ability to use solid phase resins to click scavenge excess reagent, and therefore isolate materials of exceptional purity. One demonstration of this technique is the synthesis of PEG mikto-arm star polymers that exhibit arms of different molecular weight radiating from the same core. This exotic library has also enabled a comparison of their characterization using traditional viscometry techniques and ion mobility spectrometry.

Use of click chemistry to construct complex, yet well-defined architectures

251st National Meeting (2016)

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