Tandem Ring-Opening/Ring-Closing Metathesis Polymerization: Relationship between Monomer Structure and Reactivity

Monomers containing either cycloalkenes with low ring strain or 1-alkynes are poor monomers for olefin metathesis polymerization. Ironically, keeping two inactive functional groups in proximity within one molecule can make it an excellent monomer for metathesis polymerization. Recently, we demonstrated that monomer <b>1</b> having cyclohexene and propargyl moieties underwent rapid tandem ring-opening/ring-closing metathesis (RO/RCM) polymerization via relay-type mechanism. Furthermore, living polymerization was achieved when a third-generation Grubbs catalyst was used. Here, we present a full account on this tandem polymerization by investigating how various structural modifications of the monomers affected the reactivity of the tandem polymerization. We observed that changing the ring size of the cycloalkene moieties, the length of the alkynes, and linker units influenced not only the polymerization rates but also the reactivities of Diels–Alder reaction, which is a post-modification reaction of the resulting polymers. Also, the mechanism of tandem polymerization was studied by conducting end-group analysis using ¹H NMR analysis, thereby concluding that the polymerization occurred by the alkyne-first pathway. With this mechanistic conclusion, factors responsible for the dramatic structure–reactivity relationship were proposed. Lastly, tandem RO/RCM polymerization of monomers containing sterically challenging trisubstituted cycloalkenes was successfully carried out to give polymer repeat units having tetrasubstituted cycloalkenes

Versatile Tandem Ring-Opening/Ring-Closing Metathesis Polymerization: Strategies for Successful Polymerization of Challenging Monomers and Their Mechanistic Studies

Tandem ring-opening/ring-closing metathesis (RO/RCM) results in extremely fast living polymerization; however, according to previous reports, only monomers containing certain combinations of cycloalkenes, terminal alkynes, and nitrogen linkers successfully underwent tandem polymerization. After examining the polymerization pathways, we proposed that the relatively slow intramolecular cyclization might lead to competing side reactions such as intermolecular cross metathesis reactions to form inactive propagating species. Thus, we developed two strategies to enhance tandem polymerization efficiency. First, we modified monomer structures to accelerate tandem RO/RCM cyclization by enhancing the Thorpe–Ingold effect. This strategy increased the polymerization rate and suppressed the chain transfer reaction to achieve controlled polymerization, even for challenging syntheses of dendronized polymers. Alternatively, reducing the reaction concentration facilitated tandem polymerization, suggesting that the slow tandem RO/RCM cyclization step was the main reason for the previous failure. To broaden the monomer scope, we used monomers containing internal alkynes and observed that two different polymer units with different ring sizes were produced as a result of nonselective α-addition and β-addition on the internal alkynes. Thorough experiments with various monomers with internal alkynes suggested that steric and electronic effects of the alkyne substituents influenced alkyne addition selectivity and the polymerization reactivity. Further polymerization kinetics studies revealed that the rate-determining step of monomers containing certain internal alkynes was the six-membered cyclization step via β-addition, whereas that for other monomers was the conventional intermolecular propagation step, as observed in other chain-growth polymerizations. This conclusion agrees well with all those polymerization results and thus validates our strategies

Cascade Polymerization via Controlled Tandem Olefin Metathesis/Metallotropic 1,3-Shift Reactions for the Synthesis of Fully Conjugated Polyenynes

We demonstrate the first example of cascade polymerization by combining olefin metathesis and metallotropic 1,3-shift reactions to form unique conjugated polyenynes. Rational design of monomers enabled controlled polymerization, and kinetic investigation of the polymerization mechanism was conducted