Polymers (Oct 2019)

Studying the Ring-Opening Polymerization of 1,5-Dioxepan-2-one with Organocatalysts

  • Jinbao Xu,
  • Yang Chen,
  • Wenhao Xiao,
  • Jie Zhang,
  • Minglu Bu,
  • Xiaoqing Zhang,
  • Caihong Lei

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/polym11101642
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 10
p. 1642

Abstract

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Three different organocatalysts, namely, 1-tert-butyl-4,4,4-tris(dimethylamino)-2,2-bis[tris (dimethylamino) phosphoranylidenamino]-2Λ5,4Λ5-catenadi(phosphazene) (t-BuP4), 1,5,7-triazabicyclo[4.4.0]dec-5-ene (TBD) and 1,8-diazabicyclo[5.4.0]undec-7-ene (DBU), have been used as 1,5-dioxepan-2-one (DXO) ring-opening polymerization (ROP) catalysts at varied reaction conditions. 1H NMR spectra, size exclusion chromatography (SEC) characterizations, and kinetic studies prove that the (co)polymerizations are proceeded in a controlled manner with the three organocatalysts. It is deduced that t-BuP4 and DBU catalysts are in an initiator/chain end activated ROP mechanism and TBD is in a nucleophilic ROP mechanism.

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