Preparation of amylose/polycarbonate inclusion complexes by means of vine-twining polymerization

In this paper, we describe the preparation of inclusion complexes composed of amylose and hydrophobic polycarbonates by vine-twining polymerization, which was achieved by means of the phosphorylase-catalyzed enzymatic polymerization of an alpha-D-glucose 1-phosphate from a maltoheptaose in the presence of the polycarbonates with appropriate methylene chain lengths. We found that the polycarbonate with the shorter methylene chain length such as poly(tetramethylene carbonate) was more favorable as the guest polymer to form the inclusion complex with amylose on vine-twining polymerization than that with the longer one.