Description:
Invention Summary
The invention relates to the modification of polymers having aromatic groups through formation of boronic ester groups. Polymers range from familiar synthetic plastics such as polystyrene to natural biopolymers such as DNA and proteins that are fundamental to biological structure and function. Polymers which contain aromatic groups have desirable properties such as high heat distortion temperatures and stiffness. A feature of boronic acids is their reversible formation of esters (chemical compounds derived from an inorganic acid or organic acid in which at least one -OH (hydroxyl) group is replaced by an -O-alkyl (alkoxy) group) with diols (chemical compounds containing two hydroxyl groups) in aqueous solution. Boronate esters are air- and chromatography-stable.
Market Opportunity
Examples of commercial uses are: (a) Active filtration media in chromatographic systems, (b) Recoverable/recyclable polymer-metal catalyst systems, (c) Polymer supports, either as polymer reagents and polymer catalysts in organic reactions, (d) Additives to polymer blends, (e) Membrane materials for fuel cells, biofuels production, and water purification, (f) Precursor polymers that can be used for creation of various functionalized aromatic polymers.
Features & Benefits
•The first of crystalline polyolefin functionalization that provides a high degree of functionalization without any disruption in polymer chain length (i.e., there is complete absence of chain scission or coupling of polymer chains).
•The C—H bond of pendant aromatic groups such as commercial polystyrenes with three types of tacticities (syndiotactic, isotactic, atactic) undergo catalyzed functionalization with boron reagents. A boronic ester group formed on the polymer in the polystyrene is further converted to hydroxy and arene via oxidation and coupling reactions. The functionalizations proceed without significantly affecting the molecular weight of starting polymer and the functional concentrations could be easily controlled by changing the ratio of boron reagent to monomer unit.
•The aryl boronate ester group of sPS can serve as a versatile synthetic precursor for a range of functionalized sPS products.
Intellectual Property Patent No.: 7,671,157