Synthesis, kinetic study and characterization of C5-dienes/styrene copolymers via living anionic polymerization in cyclopentyl methyl ether solvent

1,3-Dienes/styrene sequence-controlled copolymers are widely used as thermoplastic elastomers, transparent impact resin and synthetic rubber and other materials. In this work, the binary anionic copolymerization of styrene (S) and C5-dienes including 1,3-pentadiene (P, E/Z = 65/35) and isoprene (I) were studied in cyclopentyl methyl ether (CPME) ‘green’ solvent using n-BuLi as initiator, and the effects of copolymerization monomer ratio and polar additive (PA) on the copolymerization kinetics and monomer sequence distributions were investigated. The kinetic analysis results showed that all copolymerization systems were the first-order reaction and the C5-dienes/S could be quantitatively consumed. The addition of S or I was conducive to the efficient conversion of P. Although the addition of PAs had little effect on the polymerization rate, it had a great influence on the microstructure and sequence distribution of the copolymer. ¹H NMR tracking analysis showed that, for S/P copolymerization with different feeding ratios 1/3 < f_P < 2/3, the instant composition F_P in the copolymer remained relatively constant at 15% < F_P < 35% when the monomer conversion rate was below 60%, and thus the inevitable formation of P microblocks in subsequent polymerization sequences was observed. Additionally, similar sequence distributions were obtained in the case of I/P copolymerization systems. By contrast, S/I copolymerization conformed to the typical random copolymerization pattern, and the copolymerization activity of S was slightly higher than that of the I in CPME. The use of strong PAs such as 2,2-di(2-tetrahydrofuran)propane directly resulted in a change of monomer sequence from a random pattern to a gradual block pattern. Moreover, the 3,4-isoprene branch units were much more sensitive to solvent and PA than 1,2-pentadiene units for C5-dienes; also Fourier transform infrared and DSC analysis verified the microstructure and sequence analysis results mentioned above. In addition, the results of gel permeation chromatography showed that the copolymerization process in CPME had excellent controllable characteristics. © 2023 Society of Industrial Chemistry.