An Investigation of the Organoborane/Lewis Base Pairs on the Copolymerization of Propylene Oxide with Succinic Anhydride

The copolymerization of biorenewable succinic anhydride (SA) with propylene oxide (PO) is a promising way to synthesize biodegradable aliphatic polyesters. However, the catalytic systems for this reaction still deserve to be explored because the catalytic activity of the reported catalysts and the molecular weights of produced polyesters are unsatisfied. Herein, we investigate the copolymerization of SA with PO catalyzed by the organoborane/base pairs. The types of Lewis bases, organoboranes, and their loadings all have a large impact on the activity and selectivity of the copolymerization. High ester content of >99% was achieved when performed the PO/SA copolymerization using triethyl borane (TEB)/phosphazene base P1-t-Bu (t-BuP(1)) pair with a molar ratio of 1/1 at 30–80 °C. Using TEB/t-BuP(1) pair with the molar ratio of 4/1 at 80 °C, the turnover of frequency (TOF) was up to 128 h(−1) and clearly higher than the known TOF values (0.5–34 h(−1)) of the PO/SA copolymerization by previously reported catalysts. The number-average molecular weights (M(n)s) of the resultant polyesters reached up to 20.4 kg/mol when copolymerization was carried out using TEB/t-BuP(1) (1/1, in molar ratio) at 30 °C.