J. Appl. Cryst.の発刊に際して

Renewable resources are used increasingly in the production of polymers. In particular, monomers such as carbon dioxide, terpenes, vegetable oils and carbohydrates can be used as feedstocks for the manufacture of a variety of sustainable materials and products, including elastomers, plastics, hydrogels, flexible electronics, resins, engineering polymers and composites. Efficient catalysis is required to produce monomers, to facilitate selective polymerizations and to enable recycling or upcycling of waste materials. There are opportunities to use such sustainable polymers in both high-value areas and in basic applications such as packaging. Life-cycle assessment can be used to quantify the environmental benefits of sustainable polymers.

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Sustainable polymers from renewable resources

numerous polyethylene or polypropylene compounds have been synthesized by metal-catalyzed coordination-insertion polymerization. On the other hand, organometallic catalysts * To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: nozaki@chembio.t.utokyo.ac.jp. Akifumi Nakamura (left) was born in 1984 in Kanagawa, Japan. He received his B.S. degree in 2007 and M.S. degree in 2009 from the University of Tokyo under the guidance of Professor Kyoko Nozaki. During that time he joined Professor Keiji Morokuma’s group at Kyoto University as a visiting student. In 2009, he started his Ph.D. study at the University of Tokyo under the guidance of Professor Kyoko Nozaki. He is also a research fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. His research interests include synthetic organic chemistry, organometallic chemistry, computational chemistry, and polymer chemistry.

Coordination−Insertion Copolymerization of Fundamental Polar Monomers

The replacement of current petroleum-based plastics with sustainable alternatives is a crucial but formidable challenge for the modern society. Catalysis presents an enabling tool to facilitate the development of sustainable polymers. This review provides a system-level analysis of sustainable polymers and outlines key criteria with respect to the feedstocks the polymers are derived from, the manner in which the polymers are generated, and the end-of-use options. Specifically, we define sustainable polymers as a class of materials that are derived from renewable feedstocks and exhibit closed-loop life cycles. Among potential candidates, aliphatic polyesters and polycarbonates are promising materials due to their renewable resources and excellent biodegradability. The development of renewable monomers, the versatile synthetic routes to convert these monomers to polyesters and polycarbonate, and the different end-of-use options for these polymers are critically reviewed, with a focus on recent advances in c...

Catalysis as an Enabling Science for Sustainable Polymers

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.organomet.6b00371

SambVca 2. A Web Tool for Analyzing Catalytic Pockets with Topographic Steric Maps

Multiple insertions of acrylate in copolymerization with ethylene, and an insertion homo-oligomerization of methyl acrylate were observed for the first time. Key to these findings, and to mechanistic insights reported, are labile-substituted complexes as catalyst precursors.

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Insertion Polymerization of Acrylate

The weakly coordinated triflate complex [(P∧P)Pd(OTf)]+(OTf)− (1) (P∧P = 1,3-bis(di-tert-butylphosphino)propane) is a suitable reactive precursor for mechanistic studies of the isomerizing alkoxcarbonylation of methyl oleate. Addition of CH3OH or CD3OD to 1 forms the hydride species [(P∧P)PdH(CH3OH)]+(OTf)− (2-CH3OH) or the deuteride [(P∧P)PdD(CD3OD)]+(OTf)− (2D-CD3OD), respectively. Further reaction with pyridine cleanly affords the stable and isolable hydride [(P∧P)PdH(pyridine)]+(OTf)− (2-pyr). This complex yields the hydride fragment free of methanol by abstraction of pyridine with BF3·OEt2, and thus provides an entry to mechanistic observations including intermediates reactive toward methanol. Exposure of methyl oleate (100 equiv) to 2D-CD3OD resulted in rapid isomerization to the thermodynamic isomer distribution, 94.3% of internal olefins, 5.5% of α,β-unsaturated ester and <0.2% of terminal olefin. Reaction of 2-pyr/BF3·OEt2 with a stoichiometric amount of 1-13C-labeled 1-octene at −80 °C yields a ...

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Mechanistic Features of Isomerizing Alkoxycarbonylation of Methyl Oleate

The neutral κ2N,O-salicylaldiminato Ni(II) complexes [κ2N,O-{(2,6-(3′,5′-R2C6H3)2C6H3-N═C(H)-(3,5-I2-2-O-C6H2)}]NiCH3(pyridine)] (1a-pyr, R = Me; 1b-pyr, R = Et; 1c-pyr, R = iPr) convert ethylene to hyperbranched low-molecular-weight oligomers (Mn ca 1000 g mol–1) with high productivities While all three catalysts are capable of generating hyperbranched structures, branching densities decrease significantly with the nature of the remote substituent along Me > Et > iPr and oligomer molecular weights increase Consequently, only 1a-pyr forms hyperbranched structures over a wide range of reaction conditions (ethylene pressure 5–30 atm and 20–70 °C) An in situ catalyst system achieves similar activities and identical highly branched oligomer microstructures, eliminating the bottleneck given by the preparation and isolation of Ni–Me catalyst precursor species Selective introduction of one primary carboxylic acid ester functional group per highly branched oligoethylene molecule was achieved by isomerizing e

Monofunctional hyperbranched ethylene oligomers.

Theoretical studies on the overall catalytic cycle of isomerizing alkoxycarbonylation reveal the steric congestion around the diphosphine coordinated Pd-center as decisive for selectivity and productivity. The energy profile of isomerization is flat with diphosphines of variable steric bulk, but the preference for the formation of the linear Pd-alkyl species is more pronounced with sterically demanding diphosphines. CO insertion is feasible and reversible for all Pd-alkyl species studied and only little affected by the diphosphine. The overall rate-limiting step associated with the highest energetic barrier is methanolysis of the Pd-acyl species. Considering methanolysis of the linear Pd-acyl species, whose energetic barrier is lowest within all the Pd-acyl species studied, the barrier is calculated to be lower for more congesting diphosphines. Calculations indicate that energy differences of methanolysis of the linear versus branched Pd-acyls are more pronounced for more bulky diphosphines, due to involv...

A Comprehensive Mechanistic Picture of the Isomerizing Alkoxycarbonylation of Plant Oils

Current efforts to technically use microalgae focus on the generation of fuels with a molecular structure identical to crude oil based products. Here we suggest a different approach for the utilization of algae by translating the unique molecular structures of algae oil fatty acids into higher value chemical intermediates and materials. A crude extract from a microalga, the diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum, was obtained as a multicomponent mixture containing amongst others unsaturated fatty acid (16:1, 18:1, and 20:5) phosphocholine triglycerides. Exposure of this crude algae oil to CO and methanol with the known catalyst precursor [{1,2-(tBu2PCH2)2C6H4}Pd(OTf)](OTf) resulted in isomerization/methoxycarbonylation of the unsaturated fatty acids into a mixture of linear 1,17- and 1,19-diesters in high purity (>99 %). Polycondensation with a mixture of the corresponding diols yielded a novel mixed polyester-17/19.17/19 with an advantageously high melting and crystallization temperature.

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Philipp Roesle

Papers

Insertion Polymerization of Acrylate

Mechanistic Features of Isomerizing Alkoxycarbonylation of Methyl Oleate

Monofunctional hyperbranched ethylene oligomers.

A Comprehensive Mechanistic Picture of the Isomerizing Alkoxycarbonylation of Plant Oils

Synthetic Polyester from Algae Oil