Aqueous degradability of water-soluble, thioester-containing polyacrylamides with UCST-type behaviour in salt solutions obtained by radical ring-opening copolymerisation

We report the successful synthesis of well-defined, hydrophilic thioester-containing polyacrylamide copolymers by the RAFT copolymerisation of dibenzo[c,e]oxepane-5-thione with either acrylamide or N-isopropylacrylamide. These copolymers efficiently degrade in aqueous solutions of sodium hydroxide, isopropylamine, L-cysteine, and household bleach, reducing the weight-average molecular weight by up to ~80%.