Polymeric surfactants based on the chemical modification of alternating aliphatic polyketones

Abstract: Polymeric surfactants are macromolecules (polymers) with hydrophobic and hydrophilic segments distributed all over the polymer backbone. Due to their amphiphilic attributes, they have been used in pharmacology, oil recovery, micellar catalysis, among others. Polymeric surfactants are synthesized by different methods. One of them is the chemical modification of preformed polymers. In this thesis, we focused on the chemical modification of alternating polyketones for the preparation of pH-responsive polymeric surfactants, which can bear different functional groups such as aliphatic amines and charge aromatic groups. In addition, the Paal-Knorr reaction (the synthetic approach used through this thesis) allowed the precise tuning of the polymer hydrophobic/hydrophilic properties. The most interesting applications of these polymeric surfactants were the encapsulation of hydrophobic antibiotics, formation of functional supramolecular structures with porphyrins, and the preparation of redox-active organic nanoparticles