Effects of Lewis acidity and size of lanthanide salts for ring-opening copolymerization

Abstract

Lanthanide chloride salts, with a cocatalyst, are used as a near “one-size-fits-all” catalyst system to perform the ring-opening copolymerization of diverse epoxides and cyclic anhydrides. Variation of the metal in the lanthanide series leads to subtle changes in selectivity for random, gradient, and block copolymers when monomer mixtures are used.