A new Star Polymethylmethacrylate by Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization of tetrafunctional initiator

There has been a great interest to design and synthesis of new polymeric architectures such as star polymers because they can predicate the relationship between structure and polymerproperties.[1,2] Also star polymers have interesting properties in bulk state and in solution that is because of their viscositiesand high functionality in the end of polymers compared to those of linear analogues of the same molecular weight.[3] Inthe core first method, a multifunctional core/initiator initiatesliving polymerization to produce star polymer structures. Functional groups in the initiator define number of arms instar polymers. [4] Star and multiarm star polymers are the simplest branched macromolecules that multiple linear armsemerge from a single core. ATRP is a particularly successful CRP that has attracted commercial interest. [5] Because of its easy experimentalsetup, use of readily accessible and inexpensive catalysts (usually copper complexes formed with aliphatic amines or imines, or pyridine based ligands, many of which are commercially available), and simple commercially available or easily prepared initiators (often alkyl halides). In this work, star PMMA were synthesized by ATRP. All the polymers have been characterized by FT-IR, 1H NMR, Elemental analysis and GPC.