Although similar to many anionic ring-opening polymerization (AROP) capable monomers, cyclic amines do not undergo anionic polymerizations. For example, aziridine and azetidine only polymerize through cationic ring-opening polymerization (CROP) and produce hyperbranched polymers with broad molecular weight distributions. Building upon the progress made with N-(sulfonyl)aziridine polymerizations, we now report the first example of the AROP of an activated azetidine. N-(methanesulfonyl)azetidine (MsAzet) undergoes anionic polymerization at high temperature (&gt;100 °C) in DMSO to form p(MsAzet). However, unlike the sulfonylaziridine systems, light branching of p(MsAzet) does occur, although the mechanism for branching is very different from what occurs in CROPs of aziridine and azetidine. The kinetics of the polymerization of MsAzet are also studied.

Anionic ring-opening polymerization of azetidine

255th National Meeting (2018)

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