Effects of Ether on the Cationic Polymerization of Isobutylene Catalyzed by AlCl3

Shan Zhu; Kai Wang; Yangcheng Lu

doi:10.1021/acsomega.7b02076

Effects of Ether on the Cationic Polymerization of Isobutylene Catalyzed by AlCl₃

ACS Omega. 2018 Feb 20;3(2):2033-2039. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.7b02076. eCollection 2018 Feb 28.

Authors

Shan Zhu¹, Kai Wang¹, Yangcheng Lu¹

Affiliation

¹ State Key Laboratory of Chemical Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.

Abstract

In this work, we prepared different initiator solutions containing ether and AlCl₃ by changing the addition sequence of ingredients, studied the interactions between ether and AlCl₃ from the evolution of the Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra by comparison, and investigated the catalytic performances of AlCl₃ affected by ether for isobutylene polymerization. We observed that different preparation methods of initiator solutions could lead to two kinds of interactions between ether and H₂O/AlCl₃ in hexane. The strong interaction could stabilize carbenium ions and seriously decrease the catalytic performance, whereas the weak interaction could promote isomerization and proton elimination. Moreover, we found that the preparation method of initiator solutions was not a critical factor in CH₂Cl₂. Finally, a universal mechanism based on the AlCl₃-involved interactions in different solvents was proposed to understand the effects of ether on the cationic polymerization catalyzed by AlCl₃ thoroughly.