Synthesis of cyclic amphiphilic homopolymers and their potential application as polymeric micelles

Although amphiphilic copolymers have been widely studied due to their ability to phase segregate in bulk and form micelle-like nanostructures in solution, previous research has focused primarily on block copolymers. Amphiphilic homopolymers, in which each monomer along the backbone contains an amphiphilic unit, have seen only limited exploration, while non-linear amphiphilic homopolymers remain largely unexplored. Building from methods established in our laboratories for the synthesis of cyclic polymers, bifurcated amphiphiles were attached via a highly efficient “click” coupling to access analogous sets of linear and cyclic amphiphilic homopolymers (the first reported example of cyclic amphiphilic homopolymers). These amphiphilic homopolymers showed solubility in a wide range of solvents with varying polarities and also have demonstrated the ability to encapsulate guests in incompatible solvents. For the mass range examined, the cyclic polymers showed only a negligible difference in guest encapsulation when compared to linear analogs.