R. Paciello, R. Grubbs
Aug 1, 1993
Citations
0
Influential Citations
31
Citations
Journal
Macromolecules
Abstract
Ru II (H 2 O) 6 (tos) 2 (tos= p-toluenesulfonate) is an active catalyst for ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) of norbornene and 7-oxanorbornene derivatives in protic media. The activity of this catalyst can be extended to less reactive monomers, such as cyclooctene and cyclopentene, by the addition of ethyl diazoacetate to serve as an initiator. Due to the polymer/ring equilibrium for this system, the yield of polymer is low. The GPC trace of the product is distinctly bimodal, consisting of a mixture of cyclic oligomers and higher molecular weight polymer. These results show that the difficulty of polymerizing unstrained cyclic olefins in the original ruthenium systems lies in the initiation step and not in the propagation