Two-in-One: Photothermal Ring-Opening Copolymerization of CO2 and Epoxides

Chunwei Zhuo; Han Cao; Huai You; Shunjie Liu; Xianhong Wang; Fosong Wang

doi:10.1021/acsmacrolett.2c00365

Two-in-One: Photothermal Ring-Opening Copolymerization of CO₂ and Epoxides

ACS Macro Lett. 2022 Jul 19;11(7):941-947. doi: 10.1021/acsmacrolett.2c00365. Epub 2022 Jul 11.

Authors

Chunwei Zhuo¹, Han Cao¹, Huai You^{1

2}, Shunjie Liu^{1

2}, Xianhong Wang^{1

2}, Fosong Wang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Polymer Ecomaterials, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, 130022, China.
² University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China.

PMID: 35815849
DOI: 10.1021/acsmacrolett.2c00365

Abstract

A two-in-one strategy for the photothermal ring-opening copolymerization (PROCOP) of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and epoxides was developed by using visible light as an external stimulus. This strategy bridges two processes involving light-to-heat conversion and the alternating copolymerization of CO₂ and epoxides. As a proof-of-concept, aluminum porphyrin complexes were explored as photothermal catalysts to afford the copolymerization of CO₂/epoxides under a 635 nm laser irradiation. We demonstrated photothermally enhanced polymerization activity, in which the polymerization initiated by the photothermal effect showed a much higher turnover frequency than in the thermal system. Moreover, the PROCOP demonstrated a spatial-temporal control by a light on/off switch. This study provides a fascinating photothermal strategy not only for the CO₂/epoxides copolymerization but also for the ring-opening (co)polymerization of other cyclic monomers.