Post-polymerization modification of poly(vinylene sulfide)s

Abstract

The demands for the fast synthesis of a significant number of target compounds could not be met by conventional chemical synthesis. The "click chemistry" was presented as a solution to this problem based on the biosynthesis pathways and the synthesis of natural products. It is revealed in 2001 by a team of chemists at The Scripps Research Institute, led by K. Barry Sharpless. Click reactions are defined as a group of reactions function well in a variety of environments, which are simple to carry out, produce their intended products in extremely high yields with few to no byproducts, are unaffected by the nature of the groups' connections to one another and exhibit great stero- and regio-selectivity. Additionally, click reactions allow for facile product separation ways. The copper (I)-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition, an enhanced variant of the Huisgen azide-alkyne dipolar cycloaddition, is the most used click technique. Cu(I) toxicity was yet another disadvantage; it is still unsuitable for biological uses. To address this issue, numerous metal-free "click" reactions were developed to polymer chemistry. Among them, thiol-yne click and thiol-ene click reactions became popular for polymer chemists. The Michael addition reaction is a flexible synthesis technique for the effective coupling of a wide range of nucleophiles with electron deficient olefins. When Michael donors are thiols and Michael acceptors are α-β unsaturated carbonyl compounds, the reaction is called as thiol-yne or thiol-ene addition. Thiol-yne and thiol-ene are robust click reactions that are unaffected by water and produce few and harmless byproducts that can be easily removed. Recent developments of base catalysis enabled high yields with high reaction specificity. The heteronucleophilic conjugate addition reaction involving sodium thiophenolate and propiolates to produce unsaturated esters was first found by Ruhemann shortly after Arthur Michael's initial study on the conjugate addition of carbon nucleophiles to unsaturated substrates. Under ambient reaction conditions, quantitative conversions may be seen, which is undoubtedly made possible by the strong nucleophilicity of the thiolate anion and/or the utilization of highly electrophilic alkynes. The synthesis of acetylenic polymers containing heteroatoms presents considerable importance. One method employed to synthesize these polymers is alkyne hydrothiolation, which involves the combination of alkynes and sodium thiolates to produce vinyl sulfides. The concept of the "hydrothiolation" reaction was initially introduced by Truce and Simms in the 1950s. Alkynes can be hydrothiolated with aryl/aliphatic thiols to form vinyl sulfides by radical, nucleophilic or metal-catalyzed routes. By the nucleophilic and metal-catalyzed alkyne hydrothiolation processes both anti-Markovnikov (linear) and Markovnikov (branched) products are produced, while only anti-Markovnikov (linear) products are produced by the radical alkyne hydrothiolation method. The drawback of metal catalyzed route is the requirement of heat and for the radicalic route, the inorganic bases were not suitable to aryl thiols. While the radicalic reaction can be initiated by thermal or UV irradiation, the nucleophile-catalyzed pathway requires an electron-deficient alkyne or alkene with an adjacent electron-withdrawing group, such as an ester, amide, or cyanide. The nucleophilic thiol-ene addition is constrained by the availability of the activated alkenes, but it also benefits from mild reaction conditions, no detectable byproducts, and high conversion is possible under ideal reaction conditions. The development of organobases such as diethylamine, triethylamine, diphenylamine, DABCO enabled the efficient reaction conditions for hydrothiolation of activated alkynes. Thus, it is demonstrated that the hydrothiolation reaction may be carried out under ideal conditions with high yields by using the nucleophilic pathway catalyzed by organobases and adapting it to the polymer science. Tang and colleagues applied the hydrothiolation procedure to polymer science. In the presence of several secondary and tertiary amines, such as diethylamine, triethylamine, diphenylamine, triphenylamine, and morpholine in high concentrations, they carried out polyhydrothiolation of aryl dithiols with arylacetylenedicarboxylates in the presence of organobases. They also discovered that poly(vinylene sulfide)s had molecular weights up to 32.3 kDa in high yields. For organobase selection part a study conducted by Durmaz and coworkers was taken as a reference. Durmaz and colleagues investigated the systematic and selective modification of the electron-deficient triple bond using thiols via nucleophilic thiol-yne interactions. They developed a polyester with an internal electron-deficient alkyne molecule, and on this scaffold, they investigated amino-yne and thiol-yne processes. The effectiveness of several amidine and guanidine bases, as well as various nitrogen and phosphorus-based catalysts, was examined in nucleophilic thiol-yne reactions. In-depth 1H NMR investigations showed that when the nucleophilic catalysts 1,4-diazabicyclo[2.2.2]octane (DABCO) and 4-(dimethylamino) pyridine (DMAP) were utilized in the reactions, only mono thiolation was seen even though 1.2 equivalents of thiols (per alkyne) were applied. High efficiencies, such as 90 and 84%, were demonstrated by DABCO and DMAP. Additionally, the end products showed mixed stereoregularities. The catalysts were then tested using the amidine base 1,8-Diazabicyclo[5.4.0]undec-7-ene (DBU) and the guanidine bases 1,1,3,3-Tetramethylguanidine (TMG) and 1,5,7-Triazabicyclo[4.4.0]dec-5-ene (TBD). For DBU, TMG, and TBD, respectively, the efficiency for the mono additions was determined to be 83, 86, and 74%. These bases effectively facilitated the thiol-yne reaction. It is interesting that although using the same amount of thiol for each alkyne repeating unit, these catalysts, as measured by 1H NMR, also generated the double addition products (8%, 4%, and 15% for DBU, TMG, and TBD, respectively) in addition to the mono addition products. According to this study, TBD was preferred for double addition of thiols onto electron deficient vinylene sulfide units during the thiol-ene click reaction due to its efficiency and DABCO was preferred for mono addition of thiol onto the electron deficient alkyne moieties during the thiol-yne polymerization reaction due to its efficiency. Poly(vinylene sulfide)s possess activated double bonds. These double bonds can be crosslinked and functionalized with thiols in the presence of organobases. There are several studies about functionalization of electron deficient alkyne units. In this manner, the synthesis of a polymer with electron-deficient alkyne groups was the subject of research by Thayumanavan and colleagues. On this polymer, they applied thiol-yne and thiol-ene addition processes using reversible addition-fragmentation chain-transfer (RAFT) polymerization. The electron-deficient alkyne groups were modified with thiols in their work using Et3N as an organocatalyst. The thiol vinyl ether functional groups of the resultant homopolymer were modified using a potent base, TBD, to introduce thioacetal linkages in the pendant group as well. This work was an example of post-polymer modification of pendant electron deficient alkene units. Post-polymer modification of electron deficient alkene units was also conducted by Durmaz and coworkers. They employed unsaturated polyester (UP) scaffold for this purpose. By esterifying maleic anhydride with 1,4-butanediol an unsaturated polyester (UP) scaffold was created. Then, in the presence of TBD in CHCl3, this polyester scaffold was altered using different thiols. This was an illustration of post-polymer functionalization of electron-deficient alkene units in the main chain. Truong and Dove conducted a separate study on the functionalization of electron-deficient alkene units. In their research, they initiated the reaction between dodecane-1-thiol and PEG32-bispropiolate using a catalytic amount of Et3N. Then, they modified vinylene sulfide with benzylmercaptan in the presence of TBD. The purpose of this study is to synthesize polymers with electron deficient vinylene sulfide units in the main chain and modifying them with various thiols in the presence of an organocatalyst. In this work firstly, propiolic acid and ethylene glycol were reacted in the presence of p-toluenesulfonic acid monohydrate at 105 ℃ in benzene to obtain a symmetrical ester with two activated alkyne moieties. The product, ethane-1,2-diyl dipropiolate was reacted with 1,6-hexanedithiol in the presence of an organocatalyst DABCO at room temperature which yielded poly(vinylene) sulfide. Activated double bonds of the synthesized poly(vinylene) sulfide were modified with various monothiols (1-octanethiol, 2-mercaptoethanol, 2-furanmethanethiol, benzylmercaptane, 2-propanethiol, 1-propanethiol, cyclopentanethiol, methylthioglycolate, 3-nitrobenzylmercaptan, allyl mercaptan and 2-methyl-2-propanethiol) in the presence of a strong basic and nucleophilic organocatalyst TBD, in CHCl3 with various efficiencies at room temperature. Synthesized polymers were characterized with GPC, 1H NMR and 13C NMR.