Biography

Daniel Taton holds a professorship position at the University of Bordeaux, France and develops his research activities at the Laboratory of Organic Polymer Chemistry (LCPO) of which he is the deputy director since 2018. These activities are focused on both “catalysis of polymerization” and “polymerization for catalysis”. He is interested in small and easily accessible “task-specific” organic molecules to broaden the range of monomers polymerizable by an organic catalysis pathway, possibly under conditions that are easy to implement, in order to access a variety of metal-free specialty polymers. His team has also developed recyclable polymeric supports for the compartmentalization of catalysts, which provides unique catalytic activity in benchmark reactions of molecular chemistry, including in aqueous media. D. Taton has co-authored bout 160 publications in peer-review journals, 15 book chapters and has filed 15 patents.

Abstract

Organic catalysis of polymerization (OCP) has become a powerful strategy in polymer chemistry that can be implemented under mild conditions and with high atom economy, for achieving a wide array of metal-free macromolecular structures, finding applications in various domains as specialty polymers.[1] In this presentation, we will discuss two distinct cases employing organic catalysts combining both high catalytic activity or high (stereo)selectivity, and exhibiting high degree of control over macromolecular features. We will first show that chiral aminoureas and aminothioureas can be combined in duo with a phosphazene[2,3]  or a N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC)[4]  as organic base to induce a synergistic and highly efficient ring-opening polymerization (ROP) of racemic lactide. These combinations indeed lead to high catalytic activity via a highly isoselective process producing metal-free, highly crystalline polylactides. Such specially designed chiral organocatalytic pairs open up new possibilities in organic catalysis for stereocontrolled polymerization. In the second part, we will show how an organic catalyst as simple as tetrabutylammonium bis-benzoate has enabled to access self-stabilized methacrylic-based polymeric nanoparticles, via a method that we have coined group transfer polymerization-induced self-assembly (GTPISA).[5]  GTPISA can be carried out at RT in n-heptane as a nonpolar medium, achieving stable, metal-free and sulfur-free nanoparticles of various sizes and morphologies.

References

  1. Nzahou Ottou, H. Sardon, D. Mecerreyes, J. Vignolle & D. Taton, Prog. Polym. Sci., 56, 2016, 64-115.
  2. S. Zaky, A.-L. Wirotius, O. Coulembier, G. Guichard & D. Taton, Chem. Commun., 57, 2021, 3777-3780.
  3. S. Zaky, G. Guichard & D. Taton, Macromolecules, 56, 2023, 3607-3616.
  4. S. Zaky, A.-L. Wirotius, O. Coulembier, G. Guichard & D. Taton, ACS Macro Lett., 11, 2022, 1148-1155.
  5. Stiti, A. M. Cenachi Pereira, S. Lecommandoux & D. Taton, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 62, 2023, e202305945.