Development of new methodologies for the construction of functional polymers with novel
structures and unique properties is of fundamental importance in polymer science. Our research
group has been actively working on the development of new alkyne polymerization routes towards
functional macromolecules. In this talk, I will discuss our recent work on the exploration of new alkyne polymerization reactions. These reactions include alkyne polycyclotrimerization,alkyne–azide “click” polymerization, palladium-catalyzed coupling of terminal alkynes and aroyl chlorides, rhodium-catalyzed decarbonylative polyaddition of aroyl chlorides and alkynes,
rhodium-catalyzed oxidative coupling of internal diynes with either arylboronic acids or
phenylpyrazoles, and rhodium-catalyzed hydrosilylation or hydrothiolation of alkynes.Furthermore, we studied three-component reactions including polycouplings among aroyl chlorides, alkynes, and boron trichlorides, indium-catalyzed polycoupling of alkyne, aldehyde, and secondary amine, cuprous chloride-catalyzed polycoupling of alkynes, aldehydes and amino acids.Three-component tandem reactions including palladium-catalyzed polymerization of terminal alkynes, aroyl chlorides and either thiols or amines can generate well-defined sequence-ordered
polymers with easily tunable polymer backbones.
