The amphiphilic multiarm copolymers were synthesized through the modification of commercially available hyperbranched polyesters（Boltorn H40） with N-ε-carbobenzoxy-L-Lysine N-carboxyanhydride（ZLys-NCA）.After being condensed with N-Boc-phenylalanine（Boc-^NPhe） and deprotected the Boc-groups in trifluoroacetic acid（TFA）,the original terminal hydroxyl groups were transformed into the amino groups and then initiated the ring-opening polymerization of ZLys-NCA.The hydrophilic poly（L-lysine） was grafted to the surface of Boltorn H40 successfully after the protecting benzyl groups were removed by the HBr solution in glacial acetic acid（33 wt%）.The resulting multiarm copolymers were characterized by the ^1H-NMR,GPC and FTIR.The arm length calculated by NMR and GPC analysis was about 3 and 13 lysine-units for H40-Phe-PLysl and H40-Phe-PLys2 respectively.Due to the amphiphilic molecular structure,they displayed ability to self-assemble into spherical micelles in aqueous solution with the average diameter in the range from 70 nm to 250 nm.The CMC of H40-Phe-PLysl and H40-Phe-PLys2 was 0.013 mg/mL and 0.028 mg/mL,respectively, indicating that H40-Phe-PLysl with shorter arm length is easier to self-assemble than H40-Phe-PLys2 with longer arm length.
Degree of branching (DB) is a crucial structure parameter of hyperbranched polymers, which can be determined by 1H NMR, quantitative 13C NMR, degradative method, etc. However, for complicated hy-perbranched polymers, intricate structure and severe overlap of spectral signals hinder the determina-tion of DB using traditional methods. In this work, the architecture of complicated hyperbranched polymers has been elucidated with the help of 2D NMR techniques. Using such a method, overlapped NMR signals can be well separated into a two-dimensional space, and additional structural information is also available. Correspondingly, quantitative analysis for complicated systems can be realized. De-termination of DBs for three types of complicated hyperbranched polymers synthesized from step-polymerization, self-condensation vinyl polymerization and self-condensation ring-opening po-lymerization is shown as examples.
