Bottlebrush-shaped copolymers with cellulose diacetate backbone by a combination of ring opening polymerization and ATRP

Graft copolymers with cellulose diacetate (CDA) backbone and both the poly(epsilon-caprolactone) and polystyrene, or poly(butyl acrylate) or PMMA grafts were prepared by two-step process. First, E-caprolactone (CL) was polymerized by ring-opening polymerization (ROP) initiated with CDA, partly funcionalized with 2-bromo-isobutyryl groups (degree of functionalization was 0.5). The p(CDA-g-CL) copolymers were used in the second step as polyfunctional macroinitiators of ATRP of the vinyl monomer, giving densely grafted copolymers with polyester and PSt, or PBuA, or PMMA grafts. The prepared copolymers were characterized by SEC, some of them also by FTIR spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy (AFM). (C) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.