“Exhaustive” Baeyer-Villiger Oxidation of Poly(Methyl Vinyl Ketone) and Its Copolymers

The development of “exhaustive” (nearly quantitative) post-modification reactions relies heavily on the efficiency of their corresponding small-molecule protocols. However, the direct translation of existing small-molecule protocols into post-polymerization modifications were often troublesome due to undesired side reactions. For example, the development of an “exhaustive” BaeyerVilliger (BV) post-modification using existing small-molecule BV protocols suffered from a lack of reactivity or significant chain scission. Herein, we demonstrate that a careful re-optimization of a small-molecule transformation on a polymer substrate allowed us to overcome such challenges, thereby enabling an “exhaustive” BV post-polymerization modification. Furthermore, a one-pot copolymerization/“exhaustive” BV post-modification procedure was developed to produce copolymers of vinyl acetate (VAc) and more activated monomers (MAMs) in a convenient and scalable manner. This user-friendly methodology provides a general access to synthetically challenging poly(VAc-co-MAM)s including both statistical and narrow-dispersed block copolymers and could greatly facilitate the exploration of applications with such materials.