New kind of star-shaped polyethers prepared with cyclic oligo(potassium glycidoxide) as a macroinitiator

Cyclic oligo(potassium glycidoxide) activated 18-crown-6 is applied as a macroinitiator for the polymerization of propylene oxide, 1-butylene oxide and styrene oxide. This polymerization results in new star-shaped polyethers with a cyclic core. The size of the core and the number of its arms depends on the concentration of crown ether used for preparation of the macroinitiator.