Thioacetate‐Based Initiators for the Synthesis of Thiol‐End‐Functionalized Poly(2‐oxazoline)s

New functional initiators for the cationic ring-opening polymerization of 2-alkyl-2-oxazolines are described to introduce a thiol moiety at the alpha terminus. Both tosylate and nosylate initiators carrying a thioacetate group are obtained in multigram scale, from commercial reagents in two steps, including a phototriggered thiol-ene radical addition. The nosylate derivative gives access to a satisfying control over the cationic ring-opening polymerization of 2-ethyl-2-oxazoline, with dispersity values lower than 1.1 during the entire course of the polymerization, until full conversion. Cleavage of the thioacetate end group is rapidly achieved using triazabicyclodecene, thereby leading to a mercapto terminus. The latter gives access to a new subgeneration of alpha-functional poly(2-oxazoline)s (butyl ester,N-hydroxysuccinimidyl ester, furan) by Michael addition with commercial (meth)acrylates. The amenability of the mercapto-poly(2-ethyl-2-oxazoline) for covalent surface patterning onto acrylated surfaces is demonstrated in a microchannel cantilever spotting (mu CS) experiment, characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and time-of-flight secondary-ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS).