Thermal stability of ester linkage in the presence of 1,2,3-Triazole moiety generated by click reaction

The copper(I)-catalyzed alkyne-azide cycloaddition (CuAAC), so-called “click” reaction, is one of most useful synthetic strategies to connect two polymer chains. 1,2,3-Triazole ring (TA) produced by the click reaction has good thermal and chemical stability. However, we observed that block copolymers synthesized by the click reaction showed thermal degradation to give homopolymers when they are thermally annealed at high temperature, which is required for obtaining equilibrium microdomain structure. To investigate the origin of thermal instability of block copolymers, we synthesized model polystyrenes (PSs) using systematically designed bi-functional atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) initiators containing TA. PS including both ester and TA groups showed thermal decomposition at relatively low temperature (e.g., 140 °C). MALDI-TOF analysis clearly demonstrated that the cleavage site is the ester group adjacent to TA. We also found that the bromine group located at the polymer chain end plays an important role in pyrolysis of ester groups at low temperature. The pyrolysis occurs by syn-elimination of the ester group. This result implies that the phase behavior of block copolymer synthesized by click reaction should be carefully investigated when high temperature thermal annealing is required.