Facile Synthesis and Self-Assembly of Amphiphilic Polyether-Octafunctionalized Polyhedral Oligomeric Silsesquioxane via Thiol-Ene Click Reaction

We demonstrated here a facile and efficient synthesis of polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane-based amphiphilic polymer by thiol-ene click chemistry. The properties of polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS)–PEG amphiphilic polymers were studied in detail by a combination of 1H NMR, 13C NMR, 29Si NMR FT-IR, GPC, and TG analysis. The newly-designed thiol-ene protocol obtains only anti-Markovnikov addition POSS-based amphiphilic polymers when compared with platinum-catalysed hydrosilylation method. The critical micelle concentration (CMC) of the resulting polymers are in the range of 0.011 to 0.050 mg/mL, and dynamic light scattering (DLS) results revealed that the obtained amphiphilic polymers can self-assemble into nanoparticles in aqueous solutions with a bimodal (two peaks) distribution. Furthermore, the specific polymer showed obvious thermo-sensitive behaviour at 45.5 ◦C.