Weil-defined synthesis of poly(dimethylsiloxane) homopolymers

Abstract

In this work we present results on the controlled anionic ring-opening polymerization (AROP) of hexamethyl(cyclotrisiloxane) monomer (D3) using sec - buty1 lithium as initiator (sec-Bu-Li+), and classical anionic polymerization techniques in whole vacuum-sealed glass reactors. We explored different temperatures and reaction times in order to understand the influence of secondary reactions in order to obtain model poly(dimethylsiloxane) homopolymers (PDMS) with molar masses ranging from 103-105 g/mol, and polydispersity indexes less than 1.1.