Polyester-Polypeptide Hybrid Copolymer Brushes

Abstract

Polypeptide and polyesters are well-known for their biocompatibility and bioresorbability. They have very contrasting but useful properties. Combining these polymers into a special architecture of Cylindrical Polymer Brushes (CPB) is the primary aim of this thesis. CPBs have grown as an important molecular architecture in material science and biology. In this project we have synthesized polycaprolactone grafted polymer brushes and studied its properties. To accomplish this, polycaprolactone and tertiary butyl ester containing polycaprolactone polymers containing azide functionality at the end-group were synthesized separately. Poly(γ-propargyl l-glutamate) was synthesized as the alpha-helical rigid scaffold. All the individual polymers were characterized by NMR, GPC, FT-IR, MALDI-TOF and TGA analysis. PPLG polymer was confirmed to have alpha-helical structure using circular dichroism and the polymer-azides were then stitched onto it. The versatile ligation tool – click chemistry was used in order to achieve maximum grafting efficiency. Finally, the synthesized graft polymers were properly characterized using NMR, GPC and TGA to analyse their structure and study the bulk properties.