Adventitious initiator

Solvents must be purified and dried in appropriate ways. Water may act as an adventitious initiator, disabling the control of molecular weights [271]. Additional complications may take place when the complex anions... 

Hindered pyridines can act in three different ways [150,293-295]. The first is to trap protonic impurities and prevent adventitious initiation by water. This improves the control of molecular weights. The second role is similar to that of salts with common anions. The pyridinium salts formed in the system are accompanied by complex anions which may scavenge free ions in a similar manner as tetrabutylammonium salts. Hindered pyridines may also act as nucleophiles (or donors) and interact with some Lewis acids. These interactions will be directed toward the aromatic ring rather than the nitrogen atom which is protected by bulky tert-butyl groups in ortho position [293]. 

The NMR and MALDI-TOF-MS results have demonstrated that with cyanoacrylate polymers initiated with pyridine and TPP, the initiator is present as the end group. Pyridine is more easily released that TPP on thermal degradation and there is evidence that adventitious initiator can influence the degradation process suggesting the possibility of a melt-phase re-polymerisation. 

Solvent Preparation. The most critical aspect of the solvent is that it must be dry (less than 0.02 wt % of H2O) and free of O2. If the H2O content is above 0.02 wt %, then the reaction of Mg and RX does not initiate, except for an extremely reactive RX species, such as benzyl bromide. Although adventitious O2 does not retard the initiation process, the O2 reacts with the Grignard reagent to form a RMg02X species. Furthermore, upon hydrolysis, the oxidized Grignard reagent forms a ROH species that may cause purification problems. 

A typical polymerization system comprises many components besides the initiators and the monomers. There will be solvents, additives (e.g. transfer agents, inhibitors) as well as a variety of adventitious impurities that may also be reactive towards the iniLiator-derived radicals. 

Chain transfer is the reaction of a propagating radical with a non-radical substrate (X-Y, Scheme 6.1) to produce a dead polymer chain and a new radical (Y ) capable of initiating a polymer chain. The transfer agent (X-Y) may be a deliberate additive (e.g. a thiol) or it may be the initiator, monomer, polymer, solvent or an adventitious impurity. 

Also, the rates of the propagation steps are equal to one another (see Problem 8-4). This observation is no surprise The rates of all the steps are the same in any ordinary reaction sequence to which the steady-state approximation applies, since each is governed by the same rate-controlling step. The form of the rate law for chain reactions is greatly influenced by the initiation and termination reactions. But the chemistry that converts reactant to product, and is presumably the matter of greatest importance, resides in the propagation reactions. Sensitivity to trace impurities, deliberate or adventitious, is one signal that a chain mechanism is operative. 

The authors concluded that the side reactions normally observed in amine-initiated NCA polymerizations are simply a consequence of impurities. Since the main side reactions in these polymerizations do not involve reaction with adventitious impurities such as water, but instead reactions with monomer, solvent, or polymer (i.e., termination by reaction of the amine-end with an ester side chain, attack of DMF by the amine-end, or chain transfer to monomer) [11, 12], this conclusion does not seem to be well justified. It is likely that the role of impurities (e.g., water) in these polymerizations is very complex. A possible explanation for the polymerization control observed under high vacuum is that the impurities act to catalyze side reactions with monomer, polymer, or solvent. In this scenario, it is reasonable to speculate that polar species such as water can bind to monomers or the propagating chain-end and thus influence their reactivity. 

In the course of studying the reactions of Si-H compounds with dialkyltitanocenes, with a view to the synthesis of new hydridosilyltitanocene complexes, we adventitiously discovered that phenylsilane undergoes facile, quantitative dehydrogenative coupling to a linear poly(phenylsilylene) under the catalytic influence of dimethyltitanocene. The ease with which this reaction proceeds initially induced us to underestimate the significance of the observation. 

Ionic Polymerization. Ionic polymerizations, especially cationic polymerizations, are not as well understood as radical polymerizations because of experimental difficulties involved in their study. The nature of the reaction media is not always clear since heterogeneous initiators are often involved. Further, it is much more difficult to obtain reproducible data because ionic polymerizations proceed at very fast rates and are highly sensitive to small concentrations of impurities and adventitious materials. Butyl rubber, a polymer of isobutene and isoprene, is produced commercially by cationic polymerization. Anionic polymerization is used for various polymerizations of 1,3-butadiene and isoprene. 

The parasitic formation of polymers of high DP and/or broad DPD in the same reaction mixture as the living polymers is due to cationic polymerisations initiated by adventitious impurities it can be prevented by cation scavengers such as halide ions and other bases. 

The functionalization of H—Si(l 11) surfaces has been extended to the reaction with aldehydes. Indeed, H—Si(lll) reacts thermally (16 h at 85 °C) with decanal to form the corresponding Si—OCH2R monolayer that has been characterized by ATR-FTIR, XPS and atomic force microscopy (AFM) [63]. The reaction is thought to proceed either by a radical chain mechanism via adventitious radical initiation or by nucleophilic addition/hydride transfer. On the other hand, the reaction of H—Si(lll) with octadecanal activated by irradiation with a 150W mercury vapour lamp (21 h at 20-50 °C) afforded a R... 

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