CONVENIENT ROUTE TO FUNCTIONALIZED STYRENES VIA PYROLYSIS OF FUNCTIONALIZED POLYSTYRENE

Functionalized styrenes have been shown to be useful starting materials for a number of organic syntheses1as well as polymer syntheses.2 It is important, therefore, to develop a convenient preparative method for styrene monomers or intermediates that contain functionality on the aromatic ring. So far, the conventional procedure for the preparation of functionalized styrene monomers consists of several steps involving dehydration or dehydro-bromination at the last stage of the synthesis to generate the styrenic double bond.3 The overall yields are usually low to moderate. Recently, Stille demonstrated an elegant procedure to prepare functionalized styrenes by palladi-um-catalyzed coupling of aryl bromide with vinyltin reagents. An expensive vinyltributyltin is required for this method4. © 1990, American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.