The Polymerization of Polycyclic Rings

As a result, a living /controlled free-radical polymerization via an atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) mechanism has been described for methyl 1-bicyclobutane carboxylate, providing decently narrow molecular weight distributions and adequate control of the molecular weights [4, 75]. An A-B polystyrene diblock copolymer was also obtained by the same authors, using the bromo-terminatedpoly(bicyclobutanecarboxylate) as a macroinitiator. Bicyclo[n.l.0]alkanes with n 1 have also been polymerized (Table 13.6). 

Other strained structures include propellanes - molecules with two vicinal carbons independently connected by three separate bridges. These compounds exhibit an inverted tetrahedron at the bridge carbons, and are so reachve [21, 131] that they polymerize spontaneously or in the presence of trace impurihes (see Table 13.7). 

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