Macromolecules, Vol.54, No.1, 94-104, 2021
Design of Semicrystalline Elastomeric Glassy Triblock Copolymers from Oligoamide-Based RAFT Agents
Semicrystalline-elastomeric-glassy ABC triblock copolymers, consisting of precisely defined blocks based on oligoamide 11 (OPA11), poly(lauryl methacrylate (PLMA), and poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), have been designed via the combination of melt polycondensation and reversible-addition-fragmentation-transfer (RAFT) polymerization techniques. Semicrystalline OPA11 prepared via melt polycondensation was equipped with a RAFT agent at the omega-position. The resulting functionalized oligomers were further used to mediate the radical polymerization of methacrylate monomers (LMA and MMA) and generate well-defined OPA11-b-PLMA-b-PMMA triblock copolymers. AFM observations of the triblock copolymer in bulk revealed a microphase separation consisting of the formation of PMMA domains surrounded by the PLMA matrix and the presence of additional spherical nanodomains embedded into the PLMA matrix possibly corresponding to OPA11 semicrystalline regions. The triblocks were finally dissolved into a reactive epoxy-based mixture which was subsequently cured to generate a well-defined nanostructured epoxy-amine network by freezing the ABC triblock reaction-induced phase separation. Thus, the morphology appears as a homogeneous dispersion of nanometric spherical micelles (diameter: similar to 20 nm) constituted of an elastomeric core of PLMA, an outer shell of PMMA, and OPA11 in between. The described synthetic strategy and the proposed block copolymer structures may contribute to future efforts aiming at developing new hierarchically organized polymeric materials, which can be implemented in polymer physics and material science.