RESEARCHERS APPLY MAD SKILLS TO BLOCK COPOLYMERS

摘要

Polyacrylates are industrially important materials used in products such as adhesives and paints. However, acrylate block copolymers are difficult to make because the monomer starting materials are highly reactive and prone to side reactions. Now, Eugene Chen and co-workers report a one-pot copolymeriza-tion of n-butyl acrylate (~nBA) and fert-butyl acrylate (~tBA) using Lewis pair polymerization (LPP) (DOI: 10.1021/ jacs.0c01127). In LPP, the rate-determining step happens after the monomer is activated by a Lewis acid (LA), so each monomer's reactivity during copolymerization depends on the LA's preference for coordinating one monomer over the other.