Alkyne–Azide Click Polymerization Catalyzed by Magnetically Recyclable Fe3O4/SiO2/Cu2O Nanoparticles

Abstract

AbstractThe Cu(I)‐catalyzed click polymerization fully meets the trend of developing powerful and economic tools for facile synthesis of functional polymers. However, the use of Cu(I) catalyst generally results in polymers with high copper residuals, which complicate the polymer purification and limit their applications. Moreover, these catalysts can only be used one time. Inspired by the report that Fe3O4‐based nanoparticles can be used as magnetically recyclable catalysts, these magnetic nanoparticles are used to produce Fe3O4/SiO2/Cu2O catalysts. These magnetic nanoparticles can efficiently catalyze the azide–alkyne click polymerization under mild reaction conditions, producing 1,4‐regioregular polytriazoles with high molecular weights in excellent yields. The copper residuals in the polymer products are much lower than those catalyzed by the conventional Cu(I) catalysts. Moreover, the Fe3O4/SiO2/Cu2O can be recycled and reused for at least 12 times. Introducing aggregation‐induced emission (AIE)‐active tetraphenylethylene unit into the polymer main‐chains endows the resultant polymer with AIE feature, too. Thus, this work not only simplifies the polymer purification procedures, but also provides a general strategy to reduce the copper residues in the polymers.