Harnessing the β-Silicon Effect for Radical Cyclopolymerization: Direct Access to Si-Containing Cyclic Olefin Polymers.

Authors

Xu Zhang, Guodan Lu, Yuanqing Gu, Chen Zhu

Published in

Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English). Pages e3934020. Jul 07, 2026. Epub Jul 07, 2026.

Abstract

Cyclic olefin polymers (COPs) are important functional materials with extensively studied properties and syntheses. By contrast, silicon-containing cyclic olefin polymers (Si-COPs)-promising alternatives to conventional COPs-remain largely unexplored. Herein, we report a radical cyclopolymerization strategy enabled by the β‑silicon effect for the efficient synthesis of Si-COPs. Harnessing the β-silicon effect to stabilize radical intermediates suppresses the inherent chain transfer tendency of non-conjugated diene monomers in radical cyclopolymerization and enables the control of the cyclization selectivity. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations provide mechanistic insight into the polymerization pathway. The resulting Si-COPs serve as versatile platforms for post-polymerization modification and undergo controlled degradation under mild conditions. Furthermore, cross-linked Si-COPs fabricated via thiol-ene chemistry exhibit optical properties comparable to those of commercial COPs, together with outstanding adhesion performance.

PMID:
42412078
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 07 Jul 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.