The properties and applications of polymers are directly related to the backbone of the polymer and therefore the respective monomer. It is of interest to access new properties for materials, and in turn the need for new polymeric backbones. Our group is interested in silyl-substituted ketenes as attractive new monomers mainly due to these compounds containing a cumulated double bond allowing for three unique polymeric backbones to be produced. These compounds are more stable and easy to store relative to aryl and alkyl ketenes. Recently we found that through anionic polymerization silyl ketenes can polymerize, however with little control over propagation and secondary reactions. Further studies showed that oligomers could be formed with a thiolate initiator that avoided backbiting issues, however higher molar mass polymers were not obtained. This work focuses on exploring alternative polymerization techniques to polymerize silyl ketenes, such as group transfer polymerization (GTP) and cationic polymerization. These techniques offer potential of controlled polymerization of silyl ketene monomers under easily accessible reaction conditions. In this work, we examine polymerization reaction parameters (reaction time, temperature, concentration, and catalyst identity) of various ketenes to obtain polyester, polyketone, and polyketene acetal backbones.

Exploring polymerization techniques for the polymerization of silyl ketenes as monomers

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

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