Focus on polymer chemistry papers in Science in China Series B: Chemistry of the year 2009

Abstract

to a percentage increase of 236% and thereby a great historic breakthrough of the journal. These papers mainly focus on three fields: (1) polymer synthesis, (2) functional polymer materials and (3) biomedical polymers. Several research groups published a series of papers in Science in China Series B: Chemistry and detailedly introduced their works in the related fields.Yan et al. paid a great attention on synthesizing functional polymers [1-2], such as hyperbranched polymers, supramolecular self-assembly and dynamics of polymerization reactions. For example, in ref.[1], they successfully prepared nanohybrids by in situ atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) of styrene from titanate nanotubes (TNTs), and the grafted PS content was well controlled and increased with increasing the monomer/initiator ratio. Further copolymerization of tert-butyl acrylate (t-BA) from the surface of PS-g-TNTs was studied, illustrating the "living" characteristics of the surface-induced ATRP method used in this work. Yan et al. also prepared well-defined polystyrene/silica hybrid nanoparticles by the ATRP method.Shen's group research interests are mainly on exploitation and development of new catalysts especially rare earth catalysts and methodologies in polymer synthesis [3][4][5][6]. Discrete ion-pair complexes [Ln(EDBP) 2 (DME)Na(DME) 3 ] [Ln = Er (1), Yb (2), Sm (3)] have been synthesized by the reaction between sodium salt of 2,2′-ethylidene-bis(4,6-ditert-butylphenol)(EDBPH 2 ) and Ln(BH 4 ) 3 ·3THF (Ln = Er, Yb, Sm) followed by centrifugation and recrystalization [3]. The polymerization of alkyl isocyanates catalyzed by rare earth chloride salen complexes/triisobutyl aluminum (Ln(H 2 salen) 2 Cl 3 ·2C 2 H 7 OH/Al(i-Bu) 3 ) at room temperature was also developed [4]. A series of diblock copolymers of poly(methyl methacrylate and 2-perfluorooctylethyl methacrylate) (PMMA-b-PFMA) with various PFMA block lengths were prepared by the ATRP, and their surface structures and properties were investigated by different techniques [5]. Shen et al. at Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CIAC) have found the catalytic activities of lanthanide compounds in stereospecific polymerization of conjugated dienes in the early 1968, then launched extensive research activities on lanthanide compounds as diene polymerization catalysts, rare earth cis-1,4-polybutatine rubber and cis-1,4-polyisoprene rubber have been industried. Recently, Wang et al. have reviewed to summarize the progress in this field in the past half century [7]. Tang et al. [8-10] synthesized several kinds of hyperbranched polymers such as 1 Ndiethylamino)methyl]phenyl}-3,4-diphenylsilole fluorogen, poly(1-phenyl-1-octyne)s containing different stereogenic and chromophoric pendants, and soluble poly(aroxycarbonylphenylene) etc. They also further investigated the functions and potential applications of those synthesized hyperbranched polymers.Huang et al. focused their researches on long wavelength blue emission materials and further explored thei...