The anionic alternating ring-opening copolymerizations of three bio-based aromatic monomers, eugenol glycidyl ether (EGE), dihydroeugenol glycidyl ether (DEGE) and vanilin glycidyl ether (VGE), were carried out with renewable N-acetyl homocysteine...

No abstract

Among the sulfur-containing polymers, polythioethers remains very attractive structures due to their high sulfur atom content, making them interesting candidates for various industrial applications, for example in the fields of energy storage or biomedical applications.Although anionic ring-opening polymerization of episulfides is known since decades, only a limited number of efficient initiating systems enable the synthesis of well-defined polymer chains. In this work, a one-pot, two step method was developed in order to efficiently initiate the anionic ring-opening polymerization of propylene sulfide with alcohol or amine moieties using the latent thiol functionality of γ-thiolactones. First, the ring-opening of γ-thiolactones by alcohols or amines was investigated in the presence of various bases (BEMP, DBU, DMAP, tBuP 1 and tBuP 4 ). Then, the polymerization conditions were optimized allowing the synthesis of well-defined α,ω-heterotelechelic poly(propylene sulfide)s with controlled molar mass up to 10 kg.mol -1 as evidenced by SEC, 1 H, 13 C, and 2D NMR and MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. Depending on the initiating function (alcohol or amine), the initiator and the polythioether chains are connected either by an ester or by an amide bond. The stability of these bonds was studied under basic conditions.