Polymeric glucose functionalized polymers

As the most important skeletal component in plants and also a substance produced by certain bacteria, polysaccharide cellulose is an almost inexhaustible polymeric raw material with a fascinating structure and interesting properties. The fusion of both carbohydrate and polymer chemistry in a macromolecule biosynthetically composed of repeating glucose units generates surprising specificity and impressively diverse supramolecular/morpho-logical structures, reactivities, and functions. 

The first step for the core-first stars is the synthesis of multifunctional initiators. Since it is difficult to prepare initiators that tolerate the conditions of ionic polymerization, mostly the initiators are designed for controlled radical polymerization. Calixarenes [39, 58-61], sugars (glucose, saccharose, or cyclodextrins) [62-68], and silsesquioxane NPs [28, 69] have been employed as cores for various star polymers. For the growth of the arms, mostly controlled radical polymerizations were used. There are only very rare cases of stars made from nitroxide-mediated radical polymerization (NMRP) [70] or reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) techniques [71,72], In the RAFT technique one has to differentiate between approaches where the chain transfer agent is attached by its R- or Z-function. ATRP is the most frequently used technique to build various star polymers [27, 28],... 

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