Preparation and Thermal Properties of Polycarbonates/esters Catalyzed by Using Dinuclear Salph-Al from Ring-Opening Polymerization of Epoxide Monomers

Yanchuan Zhou; Ranlong Duan; Xiang Li; Xuan Pang; Xianhong Wang; Xuesi Chen

doi:10.1002/asia.201701048

Preparation and Thermal Properties of Polycarbonates/esters Catalyzed by Using Dinuclear Salph-Al from Ring-Opening Polymerization of Epoxide Monomers

Chem Asian J. 2017 Dec 14;12(24):3135-3140. doi: 10.1002/asia.201701048. Epub 2017 Nov 22.

Authors

Yanchuan Zhou^{1

2}, Ranlong Duan¹, Xiang Li¹, Xuan Pang¹, Xianhong Wang¹, Xuesi Chen¹

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Polymer Ecomaterials, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, 130022, P. R. China.
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, P. R. China.

PMID: 28990724
DOI: 10.1002/asia.201701048

Abstract

A dinuclear Salph-Al complex/bis(triphenylphosphine)iminium chloride catalyst system was synthesized and employed for cyclohexene oxide (CHO) and CO₂ copolymerization. The catalyst system had an excellent selectivity of 99 % for carbonate linkages and the resultant poly(cyclohexene carbonate) (PCHC) had a high glass transition temperature (T_g ) of 123.8 °C and a thermal decomposition temperature (5 % weight loss; T_{d 5 %} ) of 265 °C. Furthermore, this catalyst system was active in the polymerization of phthalic anhydride (PA) and epoxides. Poly(CHO-alt-PA) was completely alternating, and had improved thermal properties (T_g =142.7 and T_{d 5 %} =295 °C) compared with PCHC. The T_g values of the polyesters could be adjusted by addition of PO to the CHO/PA reaction system. For the CHO/PO/PA terpolymerization, CHO and PO participated concurrently and proportionally in the chain growth and the obtained terpolyesters had tunable T_g values from 62.8 to 142.7 °C depending on the CHO/PO feed ratio.

Keywords: Schiff bases; aluminum; epoxides; glass transition temperature; polymerization.