Bottleneck for reactive molar mass in the polymerization of propylene oxide initiated with potassium t-butoxide
✍ Scribed by Pengfei Yang; Xuwei Zhu; Yanhong Yu; Yong mei Xia; Tianduo Li
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2009
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 258 KB
- Volume
- 113
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0021-8995
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Abstract
The anionic polymerization of propylene oxide was investigated with potassium t‐butoxide as an initiator, and the solvent hexamethyl phosphoric triamide was used in controlling experiments. The relative molar mass limit of the products was determined as about 2700, and the CC double bond was found to exist by NMR. In situ Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy was used to monitor the whole polymerization process until the absorbance reached a constant value and the system reached equilibrium. However, propylene oxide still existed in the system, and alkoxide was detected in the reaction system by ^23^Na‐NMR. On the basis of these results, we deduced that the residual alkoxide was not active enough to initiate propylene oxide polymerization in the near end of the polymerization. Therefore, there might have been another factor that limited the increase of the relative molar mass of poly(propylene oxide) in addition to chain transfer. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2009