Anchor Peptide-Mediated Surface Immobilization of a Grubbs-Hoveyda-Type Catalyst for Ring-Opening Metathesis Polymerization

Adhesion promoting peptides have been reported to enable efficient enzyme immobilization on various material surfaces. Here we report the first immobilization of a synthetic Grubbs-Hoveyda (GH) type catalyst on two different materials (silica and polypropylene). To this end, the GH catalyst was coupled to an engineered (F16C) variant of the adhesion promoting peptide LCI through thiol-maleimide click reaction. Immobilization was performed in an oriented manner through the adhesion promoting peptide by simple incubation with the materials in water and subsequent washing with water and tetrahydrofuran. The immobilized GH catalyst was probed in ring-opening metathesis polymerization of a norbornene derivative to alter the surface properties in a layer-by-layer fashion.