Poly lithium coupling

There are a few reports of poly(naphthalene) thin films. Yoshino and co-workers. used electrochemical polymerization to obtain poly(2,6-naphthalene) film from a solution of naphthalene and nitrobenzene with a composite electrolyte of copper(II) chloride and lithium hexafluoroarsenate. Zotti and co-workers prepared poly( 1,4-naphthalene) film by anionic coupling of naphthalene on. platinum or glassy carbon electrodes with tetrabutylammonium tetrafluoroborate as an electrolyte in anhydrous acetonitrile and 1,2-dichloroethane. Recently, Hara and Toshima prepared a purple-colored poly( 1,4-naphthalene) film by electrochemical polymerization of naphthalene using a mixed electrolyte of aluminum chloride and cuprous chloride. Although the film was contaminated with the electrolyte, the polymer had very high thermal stability (decomposition temperature of 546°C). The only catalyst-free poly(naphthalene) which utilized a unique chemistry, Bergman s cycloaromatization, was obtained by Tour and co-workers recently (vide infra). 

As of this date, there is no lithium or alkyl-lithium catalyzed polyisoprene manufactured by the leading synthetic rubber producers- in the industrial nations. However, there are several rubber producers who manufacture alkyl-lithium catalyzed synthetic polybutadiene and commercialize it under trade names like "Diene Rubber"(Firestone) "Soleprene"(Phillips Petroleum), "Tufdene"(Ashai KASA Japan). In the early stage of development of alkyl-lithium catalyzed poly-butadiene it was felt that a narrow molecular distribution was needed to give it the excellent wear properties of polybutadiene. However, it was found later that its narrow molecular distribution, coupled with the purity of the rubber, made it the choice rubber to be used in the reinforcement of plastics, such as high impact polystyrene. Till the present time, polybutadiene made by alkyl-lithium catalyst is, for many chemical and technological reasons, still the undisputed rubber in the reinforced plastics applications industries. 

Davidjan et. al.166) have made a study of the influence upon the propagation of poly(isoprenyl)lithium in n-hexane of very small additions of 1,2-dimethoxyethane (DMEractive centers = 0.01). Analysis of polymer obtained at 10% conversion by size exclusion chromatography coupled with a determination of the dependence of the stereochemistry upon molecular weight led them to the conclusion that complexation reduces the reactivity of what they assumed to be the most reactive species, i.e., the non-associated active center. 

Morton et al.135,141) were the first to study the poly(butadienyl)lithium anionic chain end using (b). They found no evidence of 1,2-chain ends and concluded that only 1,4-structures having the lithium cr-bonded to the terminal carbon were present. A later study by Bywater et al.196), employing 1,1,3,4-tetradeuterobutadiene to minimize the complexity of the spectrum that arises from proton-proton coupling, found that the 1 1 adduct with d-9 fert-butyllithium in benzene exists as a mixture of the cis and trans conformers in the ratio 2.6 1. Glaze et al. 36) obtained a highly resolved spectrum of neopentylallyllithium in toluene and found a cis trans ratio of about 3 1. 

Coupling to produce dimeric product was a side reaction in these systems also, e.g. 75 % dimer formation was reported for poly(styryl)lithium and 23 % dimer formation with the poly(styryl)-Grignard reagent 326). However, it should be noted that the only reported characterizations of these reactions were size exclusion chromatography traces and silver catalyzed polymerization of tetrahydrofuran using the polymeric halogen compounds as co-initiator. 

One cannot simply extrapolate results obtained for simple alkyllithiums to polymeric organolithiums since important factors such as the degree of association and diffusion rates are different. Thus, preliminary examination of the reaction of poly(butadienyl)-lithium in benzene with excess ethylene dibromide in benzene produced predominately the dimeric coupling product (Eq. (78)330)). 

Star poly(methylmethacrylates) were synthesized via atom transfer polymerization using a small carbosilane dendrimer functionalized with a tertiary bromide moiety as an initiator core (Figure 12)100,101. a convergent approach to star polymers with a carbosilane dendrimer core was described in a report by Allgaier and coworkers102, in which living poly(butadienyl-lithium) arms were coupled with various SiCl-terminated carbosilane den-drimers. Utilizing smaller dendrimers with lower functionality was found to yield nearly ideal results in terms of substitution and polydispersity. 

Size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) analyses of the thermal decomposition products of poly(dienyl)lithiums in heptane at 80 °C have shown that the chain-end decomposition is accompanied by formation of species that have double and triple the molecular weight of the original living polymer [107]. After heating for 46 h at 80 °C in heptane, a 12 wt% yield of coupled products was observed for poly(isoprenyl)lithium after heating for 27 h at 80 °C in heptane, a 19 wt% yield of coupled products was observed for poly(butadienyl)lithium. Scheme 7.14 illustrates the type of reactions proposed to explain the formation of dimeric products. 

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