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Small quantities of regio-defects in a regio-/stereoregular polymer weaken its tacticity and properties. This work clarified the origin of the regio-defect in the process of synthesizing poly(monothiocarbonate) through the copolymerization of propylene oxide (PO) and carbonyl sulfide (COS) catalyzed by a (salen)CrCl complex accompanied by bis(triphenylphosphoranylidene)ammonium chloride ([PPN]Cl). Quantitative characterization results from the MALDI-TOF-MS and 1H (13C) NMR spectroscopy suggested that the chain transfer reaction resulted in the regio-defect in the final copolymer, i.e., tail-to-tail (T-T) diad and dithiocarbonate (DTC) unit. The chain transferring to water in the reaction system led to the production of a (salen)Cr-OH intermediate, which initiated the copolymerization via either attacking PO first to result in formation of a T-T diad or first activating COS to produce mercapto (-SH) end-capped dormant chains via decarboxylation, thus generating a DTC unit in the final product through another chain transfer reaction and regrowth of the chain. The content of regio-defect in the final copolymer was directly related to the water content in the system. It is essential to reduce the regio-defect for an immortal COS/PO copolymerization reaction by eliminating trace amounts of water. We also demonstrated the application of α-OH, ω-OH poly(propylene monothiocarbonate) for synthesizing a well-defined ABA triblock copolymer, polystyrene-block-poly(propylene monothiocarbonate)-block-polystyrene (PS-b-PPMTC-b-PS), with a Mn of 10800 g/mol and a PDI of 1.08 via an atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a challenging topic to disconnect a linear polymer selectively at the mechanophore site by an external force in a "cold" fashion. In this work, the effect of the power output of ultrasonication on the selective cleavage at the centered urfuryl-maleimide Diels-Alder (DA) mechanophore of poly(methyl acrylate)s (DA-PMA-a and DA-PMA-b) were quantitatively investigated by comparative study on experimental and simulated chain scission kinetics as well as high-resolution 1H NMR spectroscopy (600 MHz). At low power output of the ultrasonication (2.10 W), DA-PMA-a with Mn of ca. 2Mlim (Mlim, below which no further chain scission was observed) presented a DI (degradation index)-t (sonication time) plot with a turnover point at ca. 1.0 and no clear variation of the molecular weight after the turnover, which met well with the calculated center cleavage mode. At 5.52 W, DA-PMA-a and a poly(methyl acrylate) that contained two centered ester bonds (ester-PMA) presented similar DI-t plots with turnover points less than 1.0 within same sonication times, while poly(methyl acrylate) with fully carbon-carbon chain (PMA) had a turnover at DI value of ca. 0.5. By way of contrast, high power output of the ultrasonication (5.52 W) caused a possible cleavage of ester bonds of DA-PMA-a, which would mask the selective cleavage at the DA site. High-resolution 1H NMR result of DA-PMA-b (115.8 kDa, Mn was slightly higher than 2Mlim) showed that DA conversions were up to 55% under 2.10 W and 38% under 5.52 W. The kinetics from GPC traces and 1H NMR results of DA-PMA-b as well as 1H NMR results of DA-PMA-c (68.4 kDa, Mn was slightly higher than Mlim) under sonication confirmed the observation that low power output favored selective chain scission at DA site. The turnover point in the DI-t plot might be used as characteristic parameter to gauge the selective chain scission at mechanophore site for single mechanophore-centered polymers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]