Achiral combined polymers

The extension of DKR to polymer chemistry is not trivial in practice since side reactions that are relatively unimportant in DKR (dehydrogenation, hydrolysis) have a major impact on the rate of polymerization and attainable chain lengths because the stoichiometry of the reactants is an important issue. As a result, the reaction conditions and catalyst combinations used in a typical DKR process will not a priori lead to chiral polymers from racemic or achiral monomers with good molecular weight (>10kDa) and high ee (>95%). 

Abstract Enantioselection in a stoichiometric or catalytic reaction is governed by small increments of free enthalpy of activation, and such transformations are thus in principle suited to assessing dendrimer effects which result from the immobilization of molecular catalysts. Chiral dendrimer catalysts, which possess a high level of structural regularity, molecular monodispersity and well-defined catalytic sites, have been generated either by attachment of achiral complexes to chiral dendrimer structures or by immobilization of chiral catalysts to non-chiral dendrimers. As monodispersed macromolecular supports they provide ideal model systems for less regularly structured but commercially more viable supports such as hyperbranched polymers, and have been successfully employed in continuous-flow membrane reactors. The combination of an efficient control over the environment of the active sites of multi-functional catalysts and their immobilization on an insoluble macromolecular support has resulted in the synthesis of catalytic dendronized polymers. In these, the catalysts are attached in a well-defined way to the dendritic sections, thus ensuring a well-defined microenvironment which is similar to that of the soluble molecular species or at least closely related to the dendrimer catalysts themselves. 

Chiral (acyloxy)borane (CAB) is known as an effective chiral Lewis acid catalyst for enantioselective allylation of aldehydes. Marshall applied the CAB complex 1 to the addition of crotylstannane to achiral aldehydes and found that the CAB catalyst gives higher syn/anti selectivity than BINOL/Ti catalysts in the reaction [4]. CAB complex 2 was utilized in asymmetric synthesis of chiral polymers using a combination of dialdehyde and bis(allylsilane) [5] or monomers possessing both formyl and allyltrimethylsilyl groups [6]. 

Chiral lc-polymers can be prepared by a proper functionalization of lc-polymers with chiral and reactive groups. These elastomers are interesting, because they combine the mechanical orientability of achiral lc-elastomers with the properties of chiral lc-phases, e.g. the ferroelectric properties of the chiral smectic C phase. The synthesis of these elastomers was very complicated so far, but the use of lc-polymers, which are functionalized with hydroxyl-groups, has opened an easy access to these systems. Also photocrosslinkable chiral lc-polymers can be prepared via this route. 

An elegant combination of monomers with the components of a dynamic kinetic resolution (DKR) permitted the conversion of a racemic diol into a polymer consisting of enantioenriched units that could be recovered by polymer hydrolysis [28]. Diol 5 and achiral diester 6 were combined with a well-known system of lipase and ruthenium catalyst (see Chapters 4 and 5 for more on this). The esterification of the free hydroxyl groups is very selective (for the R) configuration) but as the polymerization proceeds, the (S) stereocentres are racemized. Upon 92% conversion of the hydroxy groups and hydrolysis of the polymer, an enantioenriched sample of the diol was obtained that contained essentially none of the (S,S)-isomer. 

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