Polyethylene (PE) is and will continue to be the most widely used industrial polymer worldwide, benefiting from its product versatility, hydrophobicity, mechanical strength, flexibility, resistance to the harsh environment, easy processability, recyclability, along low cost. Covalently linked to PE (block copolymers) polar blocks, such as polystyrene, poly(methyl methacrylate), polycaprolactone, polyethyleneoxide, and polypeptides offer significant improvements in adhesion and compatibility of PE with other polar polymers and thus broadens its applications. Consequently, the design/synthesis of block copolymers of PE with polar chains is important to both academia and industry.<br/>In 1997 Shea and co-workers, inspired by the well-known in organic chemistry homologation reaction, reported a borane initiated/mediated C1 living polymerization or polyhomologation (chains are growing by one carbon atom at a time) of dimethylsulfoxonium leading to well-defined and perfectly linear hydroxyl-terminated polymethylenes (equivalent to polyethylenes). Through the years, polyhomologation has been developed, mainly by our group, as a powerful tool for the synthesis of model PE-based functionalized materials. Some examples are given in <b>Scheme 1</b>.<br/>Along these lines, the synthesis of well-defined PE-based materials will be discussed, as well as their potential applications (e. g. PE reinforcing agents and Aggregation-Induced Emission materials).

Novel synthetic strategies towards well-defined functionalized polyethylenes

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

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