Anionic polymerization of methyl methacrylate and tert-butyl acrylate initiated with the YCl 3/lithium amide/ nBuLi systems

Abstract

The anionic polymerization of methyl methacrylate (MMA) was initiated with a mixture of lithium amide of various secondary amines and nBuLi in the presence of YCl 3, where an Y-ate complex was formed and an amide ligand on Y attacked MMA nucleophilically. In THF at −78 °C, PMMAs with narrow molecular weight distributions were obtained in high yields. The presence of a secondary amino group derived from the initiator at the polymer chain end was confirmed by MALDI-TOF-MS analyses. The initiating system using indoline as a secondary amine was effective for block copolymerization of MMA with tert-butyl acrylate ( tBA), giving poly(MMA- b- tBA)s with narrow molecular weight distributions.