The thermal elimination of sodium chloride from sodium chloroacetate can be accomplished by heating the compound to 150-200 "C. The remaining polyester ['polyglycolide', poly( 1 -oxy-I -oxoethylene)] is obtained in high yield. The reaction was quantitatively studied by thermal analysis (DSC, TG-DTA-mass spectrometry), NMR spectroscopy in solution and in the solid state, X-ray powder diffractometry, electron microscopy and X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy (EXAFS). Proton NMR spectroscopy, X-ray diffractometry and chlorine K-edge EXAFS are all well suited to determine the extent of reaction with high accuracy. The reaction proceeds in the solid state in one step without intermediates. Sodium chloride crystals (d = 1-2 pm) are deposited in a polyglycolide matrix while the external crystal morphology is preserved. Combustion of the polyglycolide leaves a sodium chloride framework. Washing out the sodium chloride with water leaves a porous polyglycolide matrix with cubic holes ('inverse NaCl crystals').Solid-state photopolymerisation reactions of organic compounds are known for unsaturated hydrocarbons, i. e. alkenes and alkynes. For example, it is possible to synthesise polyacetylenes by these methods. The study of this field of organic solid-state chemistry has been pioneered by Schmidt and continued, e.g. by the groups of C ~h e n , ~-~ Enkelman~~,'.~ Hasegawa,' Lahav,* Thomas' and Wegner." In these reactions the necessary energy for the polymerisation step is provided by radiation, i. e. photopolymerisation occurs. In general, it is a photoaddition involving unsaturated organic compounds. Such topochemical reactions are now well understood from the viewpoint of crystallography.Much less is known about thermally induced polymerisation reactions in the solid state. We now report a detailed study on the thermal elimination of sodium chloride from sodium chloroacetate which leads to a polyester [equation (I)]. This ClCH,CO,-Na+ -NaCl + 4 (-CH,CO,-), (1) strongly exothermic reaction occurs upon simply heating sodium chloroacetate above 140 "C. The organic part of the molecule polymerises to the simplest polyester, called 'polpglycolide' [poly( I -oxy-1 -oxoethylene)]. The reaction was first discovered in 1894 by Bischoff and Walden. l 1 It was studied to some extent in the first half of this century,l2*l3 but no mechanistic studies have been performed to date. Here, the course of the reaction was followed by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), combined thermogravimetry-differential thermal analysismass spectroscopy (TG-DTA-MS), NMR spectroscopy in solution and in the solid state, X-ray diffractometry (XRD), X-ray absorption spectroscopy (extended X-ray absorption fine structure, EXAFS) at the chlorine K-edge and scanning electron microscopy (SEM).
Results and DiscussionSodium chloroacetate is metastable with respect to the thermal elimination. Unfortunately, the enthalpy of formation is not t Non-SI unit employed: eV z 1.60 x J.