An effective method to prepare sucrose polymers by Thiol-Ene photopolymerization

A facile method to obtain novel sucrose polymers is reported. These polymers were obtained by means of the Thiol-Ene photopolymerization technique. The sucrose was functionalized with allyl groups by etherification with allyl bromide and then photopolymerized by the step-growth mechanism with multifunctional thiols. The kinetics of photopolymerization were determined by optical pyrometry and Real-Time FT-IR. It was found that this photocurable system was highly reactive obtaining solid crosslinked polymers that displayed high uniformity in the crosslink density. A Tg of 58 °C was determined by means of DMA for the polymer derived from A2S and PETKMP. The prepared polymers displayed thermal stability up to 230 °C.