Polyolefin vitrimers bearing acetoacetate functionality

Polyolefin vitrimers are polymer networks bearing reversible covalent crosslinking points, enabling them to be reprocessed and recycled. In this contribution, a series of polyolefin vitrimers were designed based on the acetoacetate-functionalized polyolefin copolymers, which were produced through the direct copolymerization of ethylene with polar comonomers using a phosphine-sulfonate palladium catalyst. The pendant acetoacetate group could mediate several characteristic reactions, such as the Michael addition reaction, ketone-amine condensation and metal coordination reaction. As such, structurally adjustable polyolefin vitrimers can be accessed by introducing various dynamic crosslinking bonds, including disulfide exchange, transamination of vinylogous urethane and labile metal coordination bond. The utilization of different crosslinking reactions and the mole ratio of crosslinkers significantly impact the material properties of the resultant polymers. Specifically, the generated polyolefin vitrimers demonstrated excellent reprocessability and closed-loop recycling properties. The study in this work provides an efficient strategy to access various polyolefin vitrimers.