Further developments on polymers from olefins and carbon monoxide: studies on the synthesis and material properties of novel 1,4-polyketone structures

Abstract

The aim of the work reported here is to expand the knowledge on the field of the catalyzed alternating polymerization of olefins and carbon monoxide. As it can be followed in the sections of the introduction, many efforts have been made in the field of late transition organometallic chemistry to develop more sophisticated and optimized catalysts precursors for the olefin-CO copolymerization. Moreover, the material properties of the commercially available ethene-CO and close derivatives have been extensively explored. Nevertheless, a noticeable lower number of studies were focused on the polymerization of longer olefins and on the properties of the resulting copolymers. For this reason, we decided to detail and optimize the possibility of co- and terpolymerizations incorporating such low reactive olefins. The previous experience collected by our group using other olefins (e. g. propene) showed us that, for instance, a sufficient increase of Mw led to novel properties for polyketone materials. From a different point of view and in spite of the considerable number of examples where post-polymerization derivatizations on polyketones were successfully described, there are still some opportunities remaining. In fact, the material properties have not yet been discussed in detail. For this reason, we decided on one side to investigate polyketone chemical reduction (as simplest polymer modification) and, on the other side, to search the chain-end group functionalization to create block polymers.