Controlled free radical polymerization of a sugar-carrying acrylate, 3-O-acryloyl-1,2 : 5,6-di-O-isopropylidene-α-D-glucofuranoside (AIpGlc), was achieved in p-xylene at 100°C by using a di-tert-butyl nitroxide (DBN)-based alkoxyamine as an initiator and dicumyl peroxide (DCP) as an accelerator. The polymerization gave low-polydispersity (1.2 < Mw/Mn < 1.6) polymers with predicted molecular weights. The same approach with a DBN-capped polystyrene (PS-DBN) as an initiator afforded block copolymers of the type PS-b-PAIpGlc. The acidolysis of the homopolymers and block copolymers gave well-defined glucose-carrying polymers PAGlc and PS-b-PAGlc, respectively. These amphiphilic PS-b-PAGlc block copolymers were observed to exhibit microdomain surface morphologies that differ for different copolymer compositions. This success opens up a new, simple route to the synthesis of well-defined sugar-carrying polymers of various architectures.
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Ohno et al. (1999) studied this question.