Novel Copolymers of Vinyl Acetate and Ring‐Substituted Methyl 2‐cyano‐3‐phenyl‐2‐propenoates

Synthesis and styrene copolymerization of novel trisubstituted ethylenes: 6. Methyl and methoxy ring-disubstituted 2-methoxyethyl 2-cyano-3-phenyl-2-propenoates

“…The conversion of the copolymers was kept between 10 and 20% to minimize compositional drift (Table 1). Nitrogen elemental analysis showed that between 8.2 and 27.9 mol% of MEPA is present in the copolymers prepared at ST/MEPA = 3 (mol), which is indicative of relatively high reactivity of the MEPA monomers towards ST radical which is typical of phenoxy ringsubstituted phenylcyanoacrylates [18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. Since MEPA monomers do not homopolymerize, the most likely structure of the copolymers would be isolated MEPA monomer units alternating with short ST sequences (Scheme 2).…”

“…Earlier we have reported synthesis and styrene copolymerization a number of ringsubstituted PCAs, such esters as methyl [18], ethyl [19][20], propyl [21], isopropyl [22], [23], butyl [24], and isobutyl [25]. Our objectives in exploration of novel 2-methoxyethyl phenylcyanoacrylates (MEPA) were twofold: (1) to utilize Knoevenagel condensation for synthesis of MEPA compounds with a variety of potentially reactive functional groups and…”