The First Example of a Amphiphilic Polymer Conetwork Containing a Hydrophobic Oligopeptide: The Case of End-Linked Tetra[Poly(ethylene glycol)--oligo(-alanine)].

Herein we describe the development of the first amphiphilic polymer conetwork (APCN) comprising a short hydrophobic hexa(-alanine) segment being the outer block of an amphiphilic four-armed star block copolymer with inner poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) blocks bearing benzaldehyde terminal groups and end-linked with another four-armed star PEG homopolymer (tetraPEG star) bearing aryl-substituted acylhydrazide terminal groups. The present successful synthesis that yielded the peptide-containing model APCN was preceded by several unsuccessful efforts that followed different synthetic strategies. In addition to the synthetic work, we also present the structural characterization of the peptide-bearing APCN in DO using small-angle neutron scattering (SANS).