Monomers, optically active polymerization

Finally, optically active polymeric materials with a great variety of chemical and physical properties can be expected from the extension of the stereospecific copolymerization between easily available chiral monomers and achiral functional comonomers. Limits to this extension can arise from the difficulty of finding catalytic systems able to yield stere-ordered copolymers of the two comonomers which can be rather different in reactivity. 

The most important reaction with Lewis acids such as boron trifluoride etherate is polymerization (Scheme 30) (72MI50601). Other Lewis acids have been used SnCL, Bu 2A1C1, Bu sAl, Et2Zn, SO3, PFs, TiCU, AICI3, Pd(II) and Pt(II) salts. Trialkylaluminum, dialkylzinc and other alkyl metal initiators may partially hydrolyze to catalyze the polymerization by an anionic mechanism rather than the cationic one illustrated in Scheme 30. Cyclic dimers and trimers are often products of cationic polymerization reactions, and desulfurization of the monomer may occur. Polymerization of optically active thiiranes yields optically active polymers (75MI50600). 

Transition metal coupling polymerization has also been used to synthesize optically active polymers with stable main-chain chirality such as polymers 33, 34, 35, and 36 by using optically active monomers.29-31 These polymers are useful for chiral separation and asymmetric catalysis. For example, polymers 33 and 34 have been used as polymeric chiral catalysts for asymmetric catalysis. Due... 

Extensive studies of stereoselective polymerization of epoxides were carried out by Tsuruta et al.21 s. Copolymerization of a racemic mixture of propylene oxide with a diethylzinc-methanol catalyst yielded a crystalline polymer, which was resolved into optically active polymers216 217. Asymmetric selective polymerization of d-propylene oxide from a racemic mixture occurs with asymmetric catalysts such as diethyzinc- (+) bomeol218. This reaction is explained by the asymmetric adsorption of monomers onto the enantiomorphic catalyst site219. Furukawa220 compared the selectivities of asymmetric catalysts composed of diethylzinc amino acid combinations and attributed the selectivity to the bulkiness of the substituents in the amino acid. With propylene sulfide, excellent asymmetric selective polymerization was observed with a catalyst consisting of diethylzinc and a tertiary-butyl substituted a-glycol221,222. ... 

Okamoto and his colleagues60) described the interesting polymerization of tri-phenylmethyl methacrylate. The bulkiness of this group affects the reactivity and the mode of placement of this monomer. The anionic polymerization yields a highly isotactic polymer, whether the reaction proceeds in toluene or in THF. In fact, even radical polymerization of this monomer yields polymers of relatively high isotacticity. Anionic polymerization of triphenylmethyl methacrylate initiated by optically active initiators e.g. PhN(CH2Ph)Li, or the sparteine-BuLi complex, produces an optically active polymer 60). Its optical activity is attributed to the chirality of the helix structure maintained in solution. 

Marvel, Dec, and Cooke [J. Am. Chem. Soc., 62 (3499), 1940] have used optical rotation measurements to study the kinetics of the polymerization of certain optically active vinyl esters. The change in rotation during the polymerization may be used to determine the reaction order and reaction rate constant. The specific rotation angle in dioxane solution is a linear combination of the contributions of the monomer and of the polymerized mer units. The optical rotation due to each mer unit in the polymer chain is independent of the chain length. The following values of the optical rotation were recorded as a function of time for the polymerization of d-s-butyl a-chloroacrylate... 

Enzymatic enantioselective oligomerization of a symmetrical hydroxy diester, dimethyl /Lhydroxyglutarate, produced a chiral oligomer (dimer or trimer) with 30-37% ee [24]. PPL catalyzed the enantioselective polymerization of e-substituted-e-hydroxy esters to produce optically active oligomers (DP < 6) [25]. The enantioselectivity increased with increasing bulkiness of the monomer substituent. Optically active polyesters with molecular weight of more than 1000 were obtained by the copolymerization of the racemic oxyacid esters with methyl 6-hydroxyhexanoate. 

Moller and co-workers co-polymerized dichlorodi- -pentylsilane with either dichloro-bis-(d )-2-methylbutylsilane or dichloro-(d )-2-methylbutyl- -pentylsilane in various ratios and found a linear dependence of optical activity on mole fraction of chiral co-monomer.313 On the other hand, studies by Fujiki on co-polymers 109 formed by the copolymerization of achiral (racemic) dichlorohexyl-2-methylbutylsilane and chiral dichlorohexyl-(d )-2-methylbutylsi-lane or dichlorohexyl-(l )-2-methylbutylsilane have shown that a preferential helical screw sense can be induced by even as little as 0.6 mol% of chiral co-monomer, and that at 5 mol%, the helicity, as gauged by the gabs value, is essentially the same as that of the chiral homopolymer, as shown in Figure 40. This indicates a positive non-... 

The polymerization of trans-1,3-pentadiene, 149, in a chiral channel inclusion complex with enantiomerically pure perhydrotriphenylene affords an optically active polymer, 150 (236). Asymmetric polymerization of this monomer guest occurs also in deoxycholic acid inclusion complexes (237). 

Wullf and Hohn recently described several new stereochemical results (93). They reported the synthesis of a copolymer between a substituted styrene (M ) and methyl methaciylate (M2) having, at least in part, regular. . . M,M M2M MiM2. . . sequences. Polymerization involves the use of a chiral template to which the styrene monomer is loosely bound. After elimination of the template, the polymer shows notable optical activity that must be ascribed to the presence of a chiral stmcture similar to that shown in 53 (here and in other formulas methylene groups are omitted when unnecessaiy for stereochemical information). This constitutes the first stereoregular macromolecular compound having a three monomer unit periodicity. 

Optically active polymers may be obtained by polymerization of optically active, racemic, or achiral monomers (255) (disregarding methods where chirality is introduced into the macromolecular compound after polymerization, e.g., by attachment of chiral substituents to preexisting reactive groups). Each class may be further subdivided according to the stracture of the monomer and polymer. 

Further examples of polymerization of optically active monomers are concerned with 2,3-pentadiene (dimethylallene), which gives rise to a structure like 43, already examined in Section II-C (87), with chiral acetylene compounds... 

A stereoelective (252, 299, 300) or asymmetric selective (298) or enantioasymmetric (301) polymerization where one of the enantiomers polymerizes in a preferential way in an ideal case 50% of the monomer is converted into a pure optically active polymer while the remainder is recovered as nonreacted compound also in the pure enantiomeric form (e.g., R -t- nS). ... 

An intermediate case between the polymerization of enantiomerically pure and racemic monomers is the polymerization of a partially resolved mixture of enantiomers with variable optical purity. Two processes are distinguishable, depending on whether polymerization occurs in the presence of an achiral (or racemic) or of a chiral (optically active) catalyst. 

In the polymer field, reactions of this type are subject to several limitations related to the structure and symmetry of the resultant polymers. In effect, the stereospecific polymerization of propylene is in itself an enantioface-diflferen-tiating reaction, but the polymer lacks chirality. As already seen in Sect. V-A there are few intrinsically chiral stractures (254) and even fewer that can be obtained from achiral monomers. With two exceptions, which will be dealt with at the end of this section, optically active polymers have been obtained only from 1- or 1,4-substituted butadienes, fiom unsaturated cyclic monomers, fiom substituted benzalacetone, or by copolymerization of mono- and disubstituted olefins. The corresponding polymer stmctures are shown as formulas 32 and 33, 53, 77-79 and 82-89. These processes are called asymmetric polymerizations (254, 257) the name enantiogenic polymerization has been recently proposed (301). 

Methyl sorbate and analogous monomers were polymerized in the presence of (/ )-2-methylbutyllithium or of complexes between butyllithium and optically active Lewis bases (329, 330) (see formulas 32 and 33) the polymers show weak optical activity. The prevailing configuration of the — CH(CH3)— group was determined by the sign of rotation of the methylsuccinic acid obtained from the polymer after ozonization. The low optical purity ( = 6%) found is related to the presence of a remarkable stereochemical disorder (115, 116) and to the fact that the chiral agent is active, at least in the case of methylbutyllithium, only in the initiation reaction. 

The trick used in asyrmnetric inclusion polymerization is to perform the reaction in a rigid and chiral environment. With more specific reference to chirality transmission, the choice between the two extreme hypotheses, influence of the starting radical (which is chiral because it comes from a PHTP molecule), or influence of the chirality of the channel (in which the monomers and the growing chain are included), was made in favor of the second by means of an experiment of block copolymerization. This reaction was conducted so as to interpose between the starting chiral radical and the chiral polypentadiene block a long nonchiral polymer block (formed of isoprene units) (352), 93. The iso-prene-pentadiene block copolymer so obtained is still optically active and the... 

A method for obtaining optically active polyiminomethylenes from achiral monomers was recently devised by Nolte, Drenth and co-workers (420). It consists in the copolymerization of an achiral monomer (e.g., phenyl isocyanide) with an optically active isocyanide endowed with a low tendency to polymerize. The chiral monomer is incorporated in one of the two helices and, due to its low reactivity, stops or slows down its growth. The other helix is unaffected by this phenomenon and continues to grow, permitting the almost complete conversion of the achiral monomer into an optically active polymer. 

The opposite case is also worthy of consideration. cis-2,3>Epoxybutane is a meso compound but the two halves of the molecule, and particularly the two O—CH(CH3) bonds, are not equivalent but enantiotopic. Ring opening polymerization occurring selectively on one of the bonds converts the R, S) monomer into a succession of monomer units (R, / )—(/ , R)— and so on, or —(5, S)—(S, S)— and so on. A chiral initiator can effect an enantiotopic differentiation (281) and thus give rise to an optically active polymer with an excess of (R, R) or (S, S) units (81, 82). 

Polymerization of racemic 3-methylpent-l-ene (MP) using an optically active catalyst may give an optically active polymer by a polymerization that is partially asymmetric preferential consumption of one of the two enantiomers leaves a monomer mixture having optical activity. 

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