Methods for Separating Polymers from Reaction Mixtures

Methods for Separating Polymers from Reaction Mixtures 

Traditionally, soluble polymers have received less attention as polymeric supports than their insoluble counterparts. A perceived problem with the use of soluble polymers rested in the ability to isolate the polymer from all other reaction components. Yet, in practice this separation is not difficult and several methods have capitalized on the macromolecular properties of the soluble support to achieve product separation in liquid-phase synthesis. Most frequently the homogeneous 

These macromolecule-based purification methods isolate polymer-bound products from soluble impurities, but do not generally purify the product from other polymer-bound byproducts. Such byproducts arise from incomplete reactions or side reactions and in classical solution chemistry, similar byproducts are removed during product purification at each step of a multi-step synthesis. Support-based methodologies, while removing the multiple, laborious purification steps of a classical synthesis, generally do not provide a method for the purification of intermediates. Instead, these methodologies demand that reaction conditions be optimized such that reactions are driven to completion to avoid a complicated final mixture of products. However, some developed liquid-phase methods achieve high purity of products without quantitative reaction yields [21-26]. 

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