End-group-catalyzed ring-opening polymerization of trimethylene carbonate

A controlled self-catalyzed polymerization reaction yielding well-defined heterotelechelic polymer chains and eliminating low molecular weight catalyst residues in the final polymer product were analyzed by utilizing a ternary amine. The molecular weights were kept relatively low for end-group analysis by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy (NMR) and linear correlation between the degree of polarization and monomer were found. NMR results show that the polydispersities remained low at high monomer conversions and longer reaction times after full conversion led to a larger molecular weight distribution. The results also show that the ternary amine catalyst are attached to the growing polymer chains that is shown by a downfield shift from 2.44 to 2.56 ppm. The benzoic acid ester of the ternary amine is found to be potent catalyst of Ring-Opening Polymerization (ROP).