Polymeric adhesives have attracted significant attention in both fundamental research and industrial applications owing to their excellent capability to join physically separated surfaces. Despite their wide utility, polymeric adhesives having pH-sensitive biodegradability is rare in literature. Bottlebrush polymers (BBPs) contain dense polymer brush chains linked to a polymer backbone. Because of the dense polymer brushes, the BBPs may have multifunctionality and unique properties (e.g., viscoelastic property). In this talk, we present a new bottlebrush polymeric adhesive that is biodegradable and has multiple functionalities on dense brush chain terminals. Figure 1 shows overall synthetic procedure of a new bottlebrush polymer. A grafting-from approach through amalgamating cationic ring-opening polymerization and atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) has been introduced using functional caprolactone monomer bearing an ATRP initiator. Polycaprolactone was chosen as backbone for the BBPs based on two important reasons: (a) it is biocompatible and degradable that makes them potential biomaterials; (b) it has seven backbone bonds per repeating unit, leading to lower grafting density of side chains that allows more space for the growth of secondary chains. A caprolactone derivative bearing pendant bromide-initiator was polymerized by cationic ring-opening polymerization to form a linear polymeric backbone for the BBPs. Next, ATRP of sulfobetaine methacrylate from the bromide-initiation sites yielded zwitterionic polymer brush chains via graft-from method. The brush chain ends of the BBPs are to incorporate mussel-inspired adhesion functionalities (catechol and/or gallol) to enhance adhesion property. In conclusion, we have synthesized a new bottlebrush polymer that has biodegradability and strong adhesion property for biomedical applications. The new biodegradable bottlebrush polymer adhesive can be further advanced to carry multiple functionalities such as drugs and imaging agents.

Multifunctional and degradable bottlebrush adhesive polymers

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ACS Fall 2022

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