Defined Poly[styrene-block-(ferrocenylmethyl methacrylate)] Diblock Copolymers via Living Anionic Polymerization

Markus Gallei; Bernhard V K J Schmidt; Roland Klein; Matthias Rehahn

doi:10.1002/marc.200900177

Defined Poly[styrene-block-(ferrocenylmethyl methacrylate)] Diblock Copolymers via Living Anionic Polymerization

Macromol Rapid Commun. 2009 Sep 1;30(17):1463-9. doi: 10.1002/marc.200900177. Epub 2009 Jul 13.

Authors

Markus Gallei¹, Bernhard V K J Schmidt, Roland Klein, Matthias Rehahn

Affiliation

¹ Ernst-Berl-Institut für Technische und Makromolekulare Chemie, Technische Universität Darmstadt, 64287 Darmstadt, Germany.

PMID: 21638406
DOI: 10.1002/marc.200900177

Abstract

Ferrocenylmethyl methacrylate (FMMA) is one of the very few metallocene-based monomers that are promising candidates for truly living anionic polymerization. Nevertheless, FMMA homopolymers with a narrow polydispersity, or block copolymerization studies that result in satisfying blocking efficiencies, are unknown so far. Here we describe a procedure that leads to highly regular FMMA-based polymers for the first time, characterized by polydispersity indices (PDI) of less that 1.05 and very high blocking efficiencies (>95%) in sequential copolymerization with styrene. Some of the obtained poly[styrene-block-(ferrocenylmethyl methacrylate)]s show unusual microphase morphologies, presumably the consequence of high T(g) s causing 'frustrated' non-equilibrium states.