Silicone elastomers have wide utility due to their high thermal and chemical stability, excellent processibility, and good biocompatibility. Current strategies to achieve room temperature vulcanization rely on the use of tin or platinum catalysts, which, while effective, are limited by their toxicity or high cost, respectively. We present a novel route to silicone elastomers that takes advantage of environmentally friendly, low-cost borane chemistry to vulcanize siloxanes via metal-free hydrosilylation using commercially available siloxanes and diketones. This technique can be used to produce silicone elastomers with tailorable mechanical properties as well as to introduce chemical handles for post-vulcanization functionalization.

Metal-free borane hydrosilylation as a mild route to diverse silicones

255th National Meeting (2018)

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