ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights biomacromolecular engineering via carbocationic polymerization using some case studies. Carbocationic polymerization has gained new significance in biomacromolecular engineering; one of the most-promising thermoplastic elastomeric biomaterial that emerged, polystyrene-b-polyisobutylene-b-polystyrene, can only be synthesized by living carbocationic polymerization. Butyl elastomer, a copolymer of isobutylene with a small amount of isoprene, has outstanding low-temperature properties and very high damping, but has very high creep without cross-linking. Polymeric biomaterials that have clinically been demonstrated to exhibit biocompatibility during short- or long-term use, saved millions of lives, but all show some shortcomings. Surface modification of biomedical devices based on polymeric materials has been perhaps the most important area of research. Synthesis of dendritic polyisobutylene capped with polystyrene blocks polymers (SDIBS) have been characterized by a variety of methods. Preliminary results demonstrated that SDIBS has superior fatigue properties, on account of the branched structure of the polyisobutylene core.
