Termination of Living Anionic Polymerization of Butyl Acrylate with alpha-(Chloromethyl) acrylate for End-Functionalization and Application to the Evaluation of Monomer Reactivity

Article first published online: 11 JUN 2015Anionic polymerization of n-butyl acrylate (nBA) in toluene initiated with a binary initiator, isopropyl α-lithioisobutyrate/ethylaluminum bis(2,6-di-tert-butylphenoxide) at −60 °C, is terminated with ethyl α-(chloromethyl)acrylate (ECMA) to afford a poly(nBA) possessing an acryloyl group at the terminal with 80% of termination efficiency. The reactivity of nBA against a polymer anion of methyl methacrylate formed under identical conditions is estimated relative to the termination with ECMA by reacting a mixture of nBA and ECMA followed by 1H NMR spectroscopic chain-end analysis; the relative reactivity of nBA is found 80 times or more higher than ECMA.ArticleMACROMOLECULAR CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. 216(14):1534-1539 (2015)journal articl