Construction of reversible crosslinking–decrosslinking system consisting of a polymer bearing vicinal tricarbonyl structure and poly(ethylene glycol)

In this article, we report a novel reversible crosslinking–decrosslinking system consisting of a polymer bearing vicinal tricarbonyl moieties in its side chains and poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG). A mixture of the tricarbonyl polymer and PEG (0.1 equiv of OH groups relative to the vicinal tricarbonyl moieties) in CH2Cl2 spontaneously turned into an orange-colored gel, in which a network structure was formed through hemiketal linkages. Conversely, the resulting networked polymer could be decrosslinked by treatment with water-containing solvent to recover the linear vicinal tricarbonyl polymer as its hydrate in 90 % yield. Following dehydration process by heating at 100 °C under reduced pressure regenerated the original vicinal tricarbonyl polymer.