A Novel Approval for Degradation of Polybutadiene and Synthesis of Diene‐Based Telechelic Oligomers via Olefin Cross Metathesis

Abstract

Metathetic degradation of polybutadiene (PB) in presence of a ruthenium catalyst is accomplished. Well‐defined functionalized telechelic PB oligomers with a wide range of designed molecular weights ( M n ) and polydispersity indexes (PDI) are achieved via the choice of chain transfer agents (CTAs), mole ratio of PB/CTA, mole ratio of PB/catalyst and the reaction time. Experiments are performed using Grubbs second generation catalyst (G2) in 1,2‐dichloromethane at 30 °C. It has been demonstrated that the degradation performance can be controllably tuned by using selected monomers. Additionally, when mono‐olefins are introduced, the M n of metathesis products would be on order of a few hundred g mol −1 with narrow PDI (less than 1.50). The compositions and structures of the final product is determined using GC/MS analysis, which indicates that the butadiene repeating unit number of the telechelic oligomers, could be as low as two or even only one.