Sustainability is an emerging global issue of importance to all humanity, while stereoselectivity is a perpetual fundamental task in chemical synthesis.  Synthetic polymers, predominantly petroleum-based at present, are essential to modern life and the global economy; as petroleum resources continue to be depleted, an imminent challenge exists to gradually replace petroleum-based synthetic polymers with those derived from renewable resources in a technologically and economically competitive fashion.  An important approach to advanced synthetic polymers is to control stereoselectivity of polymerization, which leads to stereoregular polymers that often exhibit superior physical and mechanical properties to the stereorandom counterparts.  Centering on these two important fronts, this presentation will describe rapid, living, or highly stereoselective polymerization of renewable (naturally occurring or biomass-derived) a-methylene-?-(methyl)butyrolactones for the production of sustainable polymers, using metal (transition metal and lanthanide), metalloid (silicon) and organic (N-heterocyclic carbene) catalysts.  The mechanism of polymerization, which depends on the type of catalyst employed, and the properties of the resulting polymers will also be discussed.

Stereo-random to stereo-perfect sustainable polymers by metal, metalloid, and organic catalysts

244th National Meeting (2012)

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