Modification of Polysaccharides Through Controlled/Living Radical Polymerization Grafting—Towards the Generation of High Performance Hybrids

Abstract

This review covers the literature concerning the modification of polysaccharides through controlled radical polymerizations (NMP, ATRP and RAFT). The different routes to well-defined polysaccharide-based macromolecules (block and graft copolymers) and graft-functionalized polysaccharide surfaces as well as the applications of these polysaccharide-based hybrids are extensively discussed.

Living Radical Polymerization by the RAFT Process – A Third Update

“…[62] The process is also given substantial coverage in most recent reviews that, in part, relate to polymer synthesis, living or controlled polymerization or novel architectures. Some of those that include significant mention of RAFT polymerization include reviews on RDRP, [63] mechanism and reagent design, [11,64,65] click chemistry, [66][67][68][69][70][71][72] synthesis of telechelics, [73] the polymerization of carbazole-containing monomers, [74] N-vinyl-1,2,3-triazoles, [75] N-vinyl heterocycles, [76] fluoro-monomers, [77] and glycomonomers, [78][79][80] synthesis of metallopolymers, [81] conjugated block copolymers, [82] dye-functionalized polymers, [83] stimuliresponsive polymers, [84,85] complex architectures, [86,87] polyolefin blocks, [88] biopolymer-polymer conjugates and bioapplications, [59,[89][90][91][92][93] polysaccharide modification, [94,95] polymerization in heterogeneous media, [96,97] microwave-assisted polymerization, [65,98,99] industrial prospects for RDRP, [100,…”

Synthetic Strategies for the Fabrication of Cationic Surface-Modified Cellulose Nanocrystals

“…The main LRP techniques include atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP), reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT), and nitroxide-mediated polymerization (NMP), which have been exploited for the modification of polysaccharides towards the formation of high-performance hybrids [66,67]. These LRP techniques have also been employed on the surface of colloidal CNCs for the grafting of several functional polymer brushes with tunable or stimuli-responsive properties [42][43][44][45][68][69][70][71].…”

Untitled

“…Conventional grafting: Polymer chains are grafted on polysaccharides through three main strategies 23 : the 'grafting through', the 'grafting on' and the 'grafting from' processes. The 'grafting through' technique involves copolymerizing pre-made vinyl functionalized polysaccharide material with comonomers.…”

“…Their use may often be harmful for some applications as they have limited control over graft molecular weight distribution. These problems have been addressed through the use of controlled/living radical polymerizations to obtain graft-functionalized polysaccharide based macromolecular materials 23 .…”