The discovery of living, chain-growth methods for synthesizing conjugated polymers has, in principle, enabled access to more diverse sequences, including block and gradient copolymers. In practice, however, expanding these methods to include co-monomers with non-aryl backbones has been limited. One reason is that the polymerization routes commonly used for generating saturated polymers (e.g., anionic, free radical, etc) are mechanistically distinct from the metal-catalyzed cross-coupling routes used to generate conjugated polymers. Recently, we successfully synthesized a conjugated/saturated diblock copolymer by focusing on a catalyst with a common intermediate between the two mechanistically distinct polymerizations. This talk will highlight the discovery and further development of this single, multitasking catalyst.

Accessing conjugated/saturated block copolymers via a single multitasking catalyst

254th National Meeting (2017)

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