Synthesis of poly(ε-caprolactone) diols and EO–CL block copolymers and their characterization by liquid chromatography and MALDI-TOF-MS

Polymers of ε-caprolactone were synthesized by microwave-assisted polymerization initiated with polyethylene glycols (PEG 200 and PEG 300) and monodisperse diols (mono-, di-, tri-, tetra- and hexaethylene glycol) and tin octoate as catalyst. These polymers were characterized by different chromatographic techniques (SEC, LAC and LCCC) and MALDI-TOF-MS. A comparison with commercially available polycaprolactone diols with molecular weight 530 and 830 showed that the new polymers had a much higher content of triblock structures, while the commercial samples contained considerable amounts of diblocks.