New strategies for the synthesis of amphiphilic networks

Amphiphilic and hydrogel polymers are useful biomedical materials. This pap er presents some recent work on new syntheses of such materials. Amphiphili c gels have been prepared by the Diels-Alder reaction of poly(ethylene glyc ol)s that contain acetylene dicarboxylate groups along the main chain, with furan-ended oligomers. Hexyl methacrylate oligomers with methacrylate end groups have been prepared. These have been copolymerized with hydrophilic m onomers to yield segmented amphiphilic gels. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.