RAFT Polymerisation by the Radical Decarboxylation of Carboxylic Acids

Meri Ayurini; Darsan Haridas; David Joram Mendoza; Gil Garnier; Joel F Hooper

doi:10.1002/anie.202317071

RAFT Polymerisation by the Radical Decarboxylation of Carboxylic Acids

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2024 Jan 22;63(4):e202317071. doi: 10.1002/anie.202317071. Epub 2023 Dec 20.

Authors

Meri Ayurini^{1

2}, Darsan Haridas^{1

2}, David Joram Mendoza^{2

3}, Gil Garnier^{2

3}, Joel F Hooper^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry, Monash University, Clayton, 3800, Victoria, Australia.
² Bioresource Processing Research Institute of Australia (BioPRIA), Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, 3800, Australia.
³ Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, 3800, Australia.

PMID: 37990056
DOI: 10.1002/anie.202317071

Abstract

The controlled grafting of polymers from small- and macro-molecular substrates is an essential process for many advanced polymer applications. This usually requires the pre-functionalisation of substrates with an appropriate functional group, such as a RAFT agent or ATRP initiator, which requires additional synthetic steps. In this paper, we describe the direct grafting of RAFT polymers from carboxylate containing small molecules and polymers via photochemical radical decarboxylation. This method utilises the innate functional groups present in the substrates, and achieves efficient polymer initiation in a single step with excellent control of molecular weight and dispersity.

Keywords: Decarboxylative Coupling; Photo Polymerization; Polymer Grafting.