Abstract
Carbon dioxide is inexpensive and abundant, and its prevalence as waste makes it attractive as a sustainable chemical feedstock. Although there are examples of copolymerizations of CO 2 with high-energy monomers, the direct copolymerization of CO 2 with olefins has not been reported. Here an alternative route to functionalizable, recyclable polyesters derived from CO 2, butadiene and hydrogen via an intermediary lactone, 3-ethyl-6-vinyltetrahydro-2H-pyran-2-one, is described. Catalytic ring-opening polymerization of the lactone by 1,5,7-triazabicyclo[4.4.0]dec-5-ene yields polyesters with molar masses up to 13.6 kg mol -1 and pendent vinyl side chains that can undergo post-polymerization functionalization. The polymer has a low ceiling temperature of 138 °C, allowing for facile chemical recycling, and is inherently biodegradable under aerobic aqueous conditions (OECD-301B protocol). These results show that a well-defined polyester can be derived from CO 2, olefins and hydrogen, expanding access to new polymer feedstocks that were once considered unfeasible.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 877-883 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Nature Chemistry |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The funding for this work was provided by the NSF Center for Sustainable Polymers (no. CHE-1901635 to I.A.T.) at the University of Minnesota. Instrumentation for the University of Minnesota Chemistry NMR facility was supported by a grant through the National Institutes of Health (no. S10OD011952).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
Keywords
- Butadienes
- Carbon Dioxide/chemistry
- Hydrogen
- Lactones/chemistry
- Polyesters/chemistry
PubMed: MeSH publication types
- Journal Article
- Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
- Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
