James H. Wang, V. Percec
Jan 1, 1991
Citations
0
Influential Citations
4
Citations
Journal
Polymer Bulletin
Abstract
SummaryThis paper describes the phase transfer catalyzed (PTC) polymerization of 4-hydroxy-3,5-dimethylbenzyl alcohol (1) and the PTC polymerization of 4-bromo-2,6-dimethylphenol (19) in the presence of 4-hydroxy-3,5-dimethylbenzyl alcohol (1). At 89% conversion the homopolymerization of 1 produced a 95% yield of 4,4′-dihydroxy-3,3′,5,5′-tetramethyldiphenylmethane (3) and a 5% yield of oligomers. The polymerization of 19 in the presence of 1 resulted in poly(2,6-dimethyl-1,4-phenylene oxide) (PPO) polymers in 71 to 89% yields. The 200 MHz 1H-NMR spectroscopy analyses of the resulting PPO polymers indicate that they represent a mixture of bifunctional (PPO-2OH) and monofunctional (PPO-OH) polymers. A radicalanion mechanism was proposed to account for both the homopolymerization and the copolymerization reactions.