Termination and Side Reactions of Polar Monomers

Polar monomers, such as methyl (meth)acrylate, methyl vinyl ketone, and acrylonitrile, are more reactive than styrene and 1,3-dienes because the polar substituent stabilizes the carba-nion propagating center by resonance interaction to form the enolate anion. However, the polymerizations are more complicated than those of the nonpolar monomers because the polar 

Several different nucleophilic substitution reactions have been observed in the polymerization of methyl methacrylate. Attack of initiator on monomer converts the active alkyl-lithium to the less active alkoxide initiator (Eq. 5-75). Further, methyl methacrylate (MMA) is converted to isopropenyl alkyl ketone to the extent that this reaction occurs. 

The resulting polymerization is a copolymerization between the two monomers, not a homopolymerization of MMA. More importantly, this results in a slower reaction (and lower polymer molecular weight) since the carbanion derived from the ketone is not as reactive as the carbanion from MMA. Nucleophilic substitution by intramolecular backbiting attack of a 

Aluminum porphyrins (Z = Cl, OR, SR) also initiate living polymerizations of methacrylates and acrylates without the need for low temperatures [Aida and Inoue, 1996 Inoue, 2000  

Polymerizations of vinyl ketones such as methyl vinyl ketone are also complicated by nucleophilic attack of the initiator and propagating carbanion at the carbonyl group although few details have been established [Dotcheva and Tsvetanov, 1985 Hrdlovic et al., 1979 Nasrallah and Baylouzian, 1977]. Nucleophilic attack in these polymers results in addition, while that at the ester carbonyl of acrylates and methacrylates yields substitution. The major side reaction is an intramolecular aldol-type condensation. Abstraction of an a-hydrogen from a methyl group of the polymer by either initiator or propagating carbanion yields an a-carbanion that attacks the carbonyl group of the adjacent repeat unit. 

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