Organolead-Containing Polymers

Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida 

CHELATION POLYMERS AND COPOLYMERS DERIVED FROM POLY(ACRYLIC ACID) 

Macmmolecules Containing Metal and Metal-Like Elements, Volume 4 Group IVA Polymers, edited by Alaa S. Abd-El-Aziz, Charles E. Carraher Jr., Charles U. Pittman Jr., and Martel Zeldin ISBN 0-471-68238-1 Copyright 2005 John Wiley Sons, Inc. 

Several early and recent reviews of lead-containing polymers have been published. Most of these include a review of the Group IVA polymers, including tin and germanium and sometimes silicon.  

The use of organolead compounds as paint biocides was also widely recognized, but tiiese lost out to the less toxic and better accepted organotin monomers and polymers.  

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In the past few years unsaturated organolead compounds have become of special interest. They are starting materials for lead-containing polymers (125) (see Sections 2 and 4 below), and the unsaturation makes the Pb—C bond especially reactive. For their preparation the procedures described in Sections II,B,C are mainly of interest. 

There are a limited number of examples of lead-containing polymers. This is attributed partially to the insolubility of suitable organolead monomers. In the 1970s, Carraher and Deremo Reese reported the synthesis and thermal properties of Iead(IV) polyesters. Reaction of dialkyllead dichloride (224) (Scheme 56) in DMSO with dicarboxyUc acids (225) in 50% DMSO-H2O led to the isolation of the lead containing polymers (226) (Scheme 56). 

A general introduction of silicon-, germanium-, tin- and lead-containing polymers is presented in Chapter 6 of Volume 1 in this series. A more extensive treatment of organogermanirrm, organotin, and organolead polymers is presented in this volume in Chapter 9, Chapter 10, and Chapter 11, respectively. The remainder of this volume (Chapters 2-8) focuses attention of special aspects and new developments in silicon-containing polymers. 

Many papers report the formation of lead-containing polymers but the formulations do not necessarily produce lead covalently bonded as part of a polymer. For instance, Honda and Kaetsu described the production of a transparent, easily moldable polymer useful for protection against radiation by dissolving a specified amount of an organolead compormd in a specified monomer ntixture. Thus lead acetate is dissolved in a monomer mixture containing methyl methacrylate, methacrylic acid, and a-methyl styrene, and free-radical s polymerization carried out. The resulting mixture is sandwiched between glass plates to obtain the desired product. 

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