Faculty of Engineering, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-8628, Japan, and List-PF, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-8628, Japan
Toshifumi Satoh received his Ph.D. in Polymer Chemistry from Hokkaido University under the supervision of Prof. Kazuaki Yokota and Prof. Toyoji Kakuchi in 1996. He was subsequently appointed as an Instructor in the Faculty of Engineering at Hokkaido University in 1996. During this period, he studied in the group of Prof. Bruce M. Novak at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and at North Carolina State University, USA, from 1998–2000 as a post-doctoral fellow. He became an Associate Professor in 2007 and a professor in 2013 at Hokkaido University. His current fields of interest include topological polymers and controlled polymerization using organocatalysts.
He has more 330 publications and 48 reviews, accounts, and book chapters.
Prof T. Satoh’s expertise is focused during the last decade on development of controlled/living polymerization system, preparation of architecturally complex polymers, and microphase-separated structures.
To achieve a feasible and versatile catalyst system for preparing multiblock copolyesters, we recently focused on a series of alkali metal carboxylates, the most representative example being sodium acetate, which has been widely utilized as a food additive. From a practical point of view, alkali metal carboxylates are highly valuable catalysts for industrial polyester production because of their low cost, easy handling, low toxicity, and good stability. Besides, the acid/base characteristics of alkali metal carboxylates can be tuned by choosing appropriate carboxylate moieties and counter cations. Such tunability provides a simple and effective strategy for controlled/living polymerization, and the great competence for the ring-opening polymerization (ROP) of cyclic esters has been demonstrated in our previous works.
In this presentation, I report one-step self-switchable polymerization system that bridges ring-opening alternating copolymerization (ROAC) of anhydrides/epoxides and ROP of esters based on alkali metal carboxylate catalysts as a substitute for conventional procedures using transition metal complex catalysts and organocatalysts, and systematically studied the structure-activity relationships of these catalysts for such polymerization. This self-switchable polymerization system (1) achieves green and highly controllable copolymerization using simple catalysts; (2) provides easy access to the synthesis of sequentially and architecturally controlled multiblock polyesters; and (3) shows a great capability for expanding the synthetic scope to various functional monomers. Without an external trigger, the catalyst polymerization spontaneously connects some catalytic cycles in an orderly manner, involving anhydride/epoxide alternating ring-opening copolymerizations and cyclic ester ring-opening polymerization, creating a one-step synthetic pathway. Following this autotandem catalysis, reasonable combinations of different catalytic cycles allow the direct preparation of diverse, sequence-controlled, multiblock copolymers even containing various hyperbranched architectures. [1-4]
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