Multiarm star polymers based on thiol-ene photoclick cyclodextrin cores

Highly efficient synthesis of multifunctional initiators based on cyclodextrin (CD) cores was achieved by a thiol-ene photoclick strategy. Different from existing approaches, the method reported here uses a thiol containing an ATRP initiating moiety to enable rapid and complete multivalent functionalization of the primary and secondary faces of α-, β-, and γ- CDs. The photoclick CD cores were attained in high yield through simple purification. They were successfully employed in a “core-first” approach to prepare well-defined multiarm star polymers via ATRP.