Living anionic polymerization can be used to prepare high 1,4-content polybutadiene. Hydrogenation of the high 1,4-polybutadiene leads to polyethylene. Living anionic polymerization can also be used to prepare poly(4-vinylpyridine) and its hydrogenation leads to poly(4-vinylpiperidine). In this work, block copolymers of high 1,4-polybutadiene and poly(4-vinylpyridine) are prepared as precursors to polyethylene-b-poly(4-vinylmethylpiperidine) and polyethylene-b-poly(4-vinyldimethylpiperidinium). The latter is designed for use in anion exchange membrane applications. The synthetic procedure to obtain the target polymer is depicted in Scheme 1. In the penultimate step, the polymer can be processed into films and then reacted with methyl iodide to produce the polyelectrolyte block copolymer. The block copolymer membranes were characterized to determine water uptake and ion exchange capacity and were examined by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, thermal gravimetric analysis, differential scanning calorimetry, dynamic vapor sorption analysis, and small angle X-ray scattering.

Polybutadiene-block-poly(4-vinylpyridine) by living anionic polymerization as precursors to polyethylene-block-poly(4-vinyldimethylpiperidinium)

251st National Meeting (2016)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.