Basic Polymer Synthesis

Abstract

Chain-growth polymerizations (anionic, cationic, Ziegler/Natta, ROMP, radical, NMP, ATRP, RAFT), mechanistic details, recent developments, and important examples.

Objective

The students should gain an overview of important polymerization procedures, learn how to deal with chemical structures and reactivities, and be able to suggest reasonable synthetic pathways to a given polymer structure. Aspects like achievable molar masses in dependence of the method used and structure perfection play a role throughout.

Content

I. Anionic polymerization 1. General 2. Living polymerization 3. Group transfer polymerization (GTP) 4. Some recent developments II. Cationic polymerization 1. General 2. Some applications (macromonomer and telechelics) III. Ziegler/Natta- and metallocene polymerization 1. General 2. Mechanism 3. Some applications IV. Ring-opening metathesis polymerization 1. Catalysts 2. Monomers, polymer structures 3. Mechanism 4. Termination 5. Examples V. Controlled radical polymerization 1. Nitroxide mediated polymerization (NMP) 2. Atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) 3. Reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer polymerization (RAFT) For step-growth procedures and other topics (dendrimers, bottle-brushes, macrocycles, polyrotaxanes, topochemical polymerizations etc.) see Advanced Polymer Synthesis

Resources