Abstract
Synthesis of copolymers from carbon dioxide (CO2) and epoxides is an important research direction as such processes utilize the abundant greenhouse gas and deliver useful products. Specifically, cooligomers of CO2 and propylene oxide (PO) with a non-alternating structure can be used for polyurethane preparation. They are synthesized by employing Zn-Co cyanide catalysts. The application of alternative metal cyanide complexes is interesting from scientific and practical points of view. The purpose of this work was to study the copolymerization of CO2 and PO in the presence of Co-Ni cyanide catalysts and chain transfer agents (CTAs) in order to obtain low molecular weight products. Three Co-Ni catalysts with different contents of complexing agents were synthesized, characterized by several analytical methods and applied for this reaction. The complex without complexing agents was chosen for detailed investigation. 1,6-Hexanediol proved to be a more preferred CTA than poly(propylene glycol) and adipic acid. An oligo(ethercarbonate) (Mn = 2560, PDI = 2.5, CO2 = 20 mol.%) capped with OH groups was synthesized with relatively high productivity (1320 gPO+CO2/gcat in 24 h) and characterized by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) MS and NMR methods. The main chain transfer routes during the cooligomerization were suggested on the basis of the research results.
Highlights
chains HO-(CH2 )6 -O-(C3 H6 O)19 (CO2) utilization for the production of chemicals attracts a lot of attention because it can decrease the use of fossil-based starting materials [1]
CO2/propylene oxide (PO) cooligomers in the presence Co-Ni cyanide complexes and chain transfer agents (CTAs), we explored this process presence Co-Ni cyanide complexes and CTAs, we explored this process to estimate their reactivity to estimate their reactivity and the composition of the final products
Catalysts based on other combinations of metals were mostly the introduction of CTAs into the copolymerization process
Summary
CO2 utilization for the production of chemicals attracts a lot of attention because it can decrease the use of fossil-based starting materials [1]. One way of utilizing CO2 is incorporating it into copolymers with epoxides [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. A lot of efforts were given to the synthesis of the alternating copolymers (structure 1 in Scheme 1) of CO2 with propylene oxide (PO) because PO is a cheap and industrially relevant epoxide. These materials have glass transition temperature around 40 ◦ C which makes them inconvenient for usage.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
