Functional polylactide via ring-opening copolymerisation with allyl, benzyl and propargyl glycidyl ethers

A versatile and simple strategy is presented to synthesize reactive polylactide derivatives and their block copolymers with polyethylene glycol. Commercially available glycidyl ethers with an allyl, benzyl or propargyl functional group were copolymerised with bplactide. Tin(II)-2-ethylhexanoate-catalysis produced polymers with up to 4.6, 5.9 and 2.3 allyl, benzyl or propargyl groups per chain, respectively. In contrast, less than one reactive group per chain was obtained with the organocatalyst 1,5,7-triazabicyclo[4.4.0]dec-5-ene. By increasing the polymerisation feed ratio in glycidyl ether polymers with a higher number of reactive groups per chain were obtained, however a decrease in molar mass was observed. An azidocoumarin was conjugated to the propargylated polymers via copper-catalysed azide-alkyne cycloaddition. These dye-labelled polymers produced nanospheres with fluorescent properties and diameters in the 100-nm size range, as characterised by asymmetric flow field flow fractionation hyphenated with fluorescence, static and dynamic light scattering detection. The functionalised polymers were obtained at gram-scale in one step from commercially available reagents; therefore providing a robust and easy to implement approach for the production of multifunctional nanomaterials.