Effect of head-to-head addition in vinyl acetate controlled radical polymerization: why is Co(acac)2-mediated polymerization so much better?

The controlled polymerization of vinyl acetate has been recently achieved by several techniques, but PVAc with targeted Mn and low dispersity up to very high monomer conversions and high degrees of polymerization was only obtained with Co(acac)2 as controlling agent in the so-called CMRP, a type of organometallic mediated radical polymerization (OMRP). Other techniques (including ATRP, ITP, TERP, and RAFT/MADIX) have shown a more or less pronounced slowdown in the polymerization kinetics, which was attributed to the higher strength of the C−X bond between the radical PVAc chain and the trapping agent (X) in the dormant species and to a consequent slower reactivation after a less frequent head-to-head monomer addition. The reason for the CMRP exception is clarified by the present contribution. First, a detailed investigation by 1H, 13C and multiplicity-edited HSQC and DEPT-135 NMR of the PVAc obtained by CMRP, in comparison with a regular polymer made by free radical polymerization under the same conditions, has revealed that Co(acac)2 does not significantly alter the fraction of head-to-head sequences in the polymer backbone and that there is no accumulation of Co(acac)2-capped chains with a head-to-head ω end. Hence, both dormant chains (following the head-to-head and the head-to-tail monomer additions) must be reactivated at similar rates. A DFT study shows that this is possible because the dormant chains are stabilized not only by the C−Co σ bond but also by formation of a chelate ring through coordination of the ω monomer carbonyl group. The head-to-head dormant chain contains an inherently stronger C−Co bond but forms a weaker 6-membered chelate ring, whereas the weaker C−Co bond in the head-to-tail dormant chain is compensated by a stronger 5-membered chelate ring. Combination of the two effects leads to similar activation enthalpies, as verified by DFT calculations using a variety of local, gradient-corrected, hybrid and “ad hoc” functionals (BPW91, B3PW91, BPW91*, M06 and M06L). While the BDE(C−X) of model H-VAc−X molecules [X = Cl, I, MeTe, EtOC(S)S and Co(acac)2] are functional dependent, the BDE difference between head-to-head and head-to-tail dormant chain models is almost functional insensitive, with values of 5−9 kcal/mol for the ATRP, ITP and TERP models, 3−6 for the RAFT/MADIX model, and around zero for CMRP