Addition of silica gel to a completed homogeneous metathesis polymerization catalyzed by Cl 2(Cy3P)2RuCHPh (1) converts the residue of 1 to a highly effective heterogeneous olefin hydrogenation catalyst. Quantitative olefin hydrogenation of the unsaturated polymer under very mild conditions occurs in the presence of a variety of functional groups. This tandem homogeneous metathesis/heterogeneous hydrogenation procedure is used to prepare commercially relevant polyethylene-based materials, such as sequence ordered ethylene/CO 2 and ethylene/CO copolymers as well as telechelic polyethylene.
IntroductionRecent advances in olefin metathesis have established this reaction pathway as a powerful transformation in organic chemistry, where growing confidence of its utility by the synthetic community is demonstrated by the willingness to implicate this reaction in multistep syntheses of natural products. 1 The rapidly expanding scope of this reaction and delineation of structurereactivity relationships also have allowed its exploitation in metathesis polymerization to prepare polymers with well-defined microstructures. 2 Hydrogenation of these unsaturated backbones provides polymers that may be difficult or impossible to obtain by direct means, where examples include the preparation of perfectly linear polyethylene 3 and telechelic polyethylene, 4 model polyolefins with regularly spaced pendant groups, 5 polyarylene-alkylenes, 6 and ethylene block copolymers with precisely controlled monomer run lengths. 7 Of commercial importance are the hydrogenated polymers of norbornene and polycyclic derivatives of norbornene marketed as Zeonex. Typical routes involve first the synthesis and isolation of unsaturated polymers followed by a second step in which the polymers are hydrogenated with additional reagents and/or catalyst.A combined metathesis/hydrogenation procedure would be preferred, and recently McLain 8 et al. reported a onepot procedure for doing so. An ethylene/methyl acrylate copolymer was synthesized first by the ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) of an ester-functionalized cyclooctene using the ruthenium catalyst Cl 2 (PCy 3 ) 2 RudCHCHdCPh 2 , followed by homogeneous hydrogenation. The hydrogenation step is performed by applying relatively high hydrogen pressures to the completed ROMP reaction at 135°C, where hydrogen pressures of at least 400 psi were required to maintain catalytic activity of this homogeneous system sufficient to achieve >99% reduction. The hydrogenating species was assumed to be RuHCl(PCy 3 ) 2 , and the need for higher pressures most likely stems from decomposition