Effect of host-guest complexation on the thermoresponsive behavior of poly(oligo ethylene glycol acrylate)s functionalized with dialkoxynapththalene guest side chains

The combination of thermoresponsive polymers with supramolecular host-guest interactions enables accurate tuning of the phase transition temperature, while also providing additional response mechanisms based on host-guest complexation. Most studies focused on a single thermoresponsive polymer to demonstrate the effect of host-guest complexation on the responsive behavior. In this work, the effect of the polymer structure on the host-guest complexation and thermoresponsive behavior is reported. Therefore, different poly(oligoethylene glycol acrylate)s, namely, poly(2-hydroxyethylacrylate) (PHEA), poly(methoxy diethylene glycol acrylate), poly(methoxy triethylene glycol acrylate), and poly(methoxy tetraethylene glycol acrylate), are synthesized functionalized with 1,5-dialkoxynaphthalene guest molecules in the side chain. Their complexation with the cyclobis(paraquat-p-phenylene) tetrachloride host is studied to understand the effect of polymer structure on the supramolecular association and the polymer phase transition, revealing that the oligoethylene glycol side chains lead to weaker host-guest complexation and also have a smaller increase in the cloud point temperature compared to PHEA