Polymer back-biting

Intramolecular chain transfer to polymer (back-biting) should lead to the formation of cyclic oligomers ... 

This reaction also plays a role in the degradation of polysulftdes. A back-biting mechanism as shown in equation 6 results in formation of the cycHc disulfide (5). Steam distillation of polysulftdes results in continuous gradual collection of (5). There is an equiUbrium between the linear polysulftde polymer and the cycHc disulfide. Although the linear polymer is favored and only small amounts of the cycHc compound are normally present, conditions such as steam distillation, which remove (5), drive the equiUbrium process toward depolymerization. 

Heterochain polymers produced by ring-opening polymerization contain the hetero-atoms in the main chain as well as in the monomer and the polymer chain competes with the monomer for the reaction with the propagating species. This competition leads to polymer transfer and back-biting reactions during the polymerization. Heterochain polymers are also susceptible to depolymerization by the ionic active species which are easily formed during processing. 

Alcohol functions have also been introduced via hydrosilylation reactions, for example, the reaction of T8[OSiMe2H]8 with allyl alcohol and allyloxy ethanol (Table 19). In the first case, it has been postulated that the compound T8[OSiMe2 (CH2)30H]8 is not very stable due to back-biting of the -OH groups on the silicon corners (Figure 31). Nevertheless, it reacts with polymers such as polyvinyl pyrrolidone to give polymer hybrids (Table 19, entries 4 and 5). 

There are still some non-explained observations. For example, syndiotactic PP was reported [45,46] as being more stable than isotactic polymer. At 140°C, the maximum chemiluminescence intensity was achieved after 2,835 min for syndiotactic PP, while isotactic polymer attained the maximum after only 45 min. Atactic PP was reported to be more stable than the isotactic polymer [46]. An explanation has been offered that the structure of isotactic PP is much more favourable for autooxidation, which proceeds easier via a back-biting mechanism where peroxyl radicals abstract adjacent tertiary hydrogens on the same polymer chain. 

The radical at the end of the growing polymer chain can also abstract a hydrogen atom from itself by what is called back biting. This leads to chain branching. 

When one considers how cyclic polymers could be formed from propagating species (VII) one is faced with exactly the same problem as with the carboxonium ion theory either there must be a 100% efficient end-to-end ring-closure (which in any case would be confined to polymers with an initial hydroxyl group) or there must be back-biting and the formation of linear fragments, as illustrated by Jaacks [17a]. 

During polymer chain growth, a back-biting process can lead to cyclic carbonate formation. In general, this process is more facile for aliphatic epoxides than for alicyclic epoxides and when the growing polymer chain dissociates from the metal center (Scheme 3). 

Polymerisations of 8,9, and 10 were rapid but stopped at limited conversions owing to a termination process involving an intramolecular back-biting reaction, the tertiary amino groups on the polymer backbone being more... 

Other reactions may be taken into consideration, with an effect on polymer structure, namely the formation of short- and long-chain branches. A complete list of reactions in S-PVC polymerization may be found in Kiparissides et al. [5]. On the above basis kinetic equations may be written. To keep it simple the chain transfer, back-biting and inhibition reactions are disregarded, while termination is considered to occur only by disproportionation. The elementary reaction rates for initiator decomposition and free radicals generation are as follows ... 

The cationic polymerization of styrene sulfide has been reinvestigated by Van Craeynest (15). With triethyloxonium tetrafluoroborate as initiator, a rapid and quantitative polymerization was observed, followed by a slow degradation of die polymer to a mixture of cis and tram 2,5-diphenyl-l, 4-dithiane and as and tram 2,6-diphenyl-1,4-dithiane. Since the BF4 counter ion is not capable of forming a covalent bond, a back-biting reaction via sulfonium ions seems the plausible mechanism for the dimer formation. The polymerization initiated with dimethyl sulfate showed the same characteristics a fast polymerization is followed by degradation to the same mixture of isomeric diphenyl- 1,4-dithianes. However, the mwts-2,5-diphenyl derivative was the only isomer that crystallized from the solution. It is therefore reasonable to accept that with dimethyl sulfate also, the cyclic dimers of styrene sulfide are formed by a back-biting type of degradation of the polymer and not by the mechanism shown above. 

The important observation was that oligomers with rinpizes 6,12,18, 24... etc. were 10 to 100 times more abundant than the others. This strongly indicates that these oligomers are formed directly from monomer since there are no reasons for supposing that the formation of these rings by a back-biting mechanism from polymer would be especially favored. 

In this sequence of reactions, it is the monomer that forms oxonium ion [thus Activated Monomer (AM) mechanism] and the growing chain end is neutral. As shown in the series of papers [107-115], if the conditions are created, when AM mechanism predominates, by keeping the low instantaneous ratio of [monomer]/[HO-] (slow addition of monomer to reaction mixture), back-biting is effectively eliminated. Linear polymers, free of cyclic fraction are obtained under these conditions. The mechanism and kinetics of AM polymerization of oxiranes is discussed in detail in recent monograph [6]. 

Back-biting reaction occurring during cationic polymerization of lactams is detrimental to preparation of block copolymers of two different lactams by sequential polymerization. Block copolymers can be obtained only in those systems in which the rate of polymerization of the second monomer is much higher than the rate of chain transfer to polymer resulting in transamidation [219]. 

---