Hybrid Photo-induced Copolymerization of Ring-Strained and Vinyl Monomers Utilizing Metal-Free Ring-Opening Metathesis Polymerization Conditions

We introduce the hybrid copolymerization of two disparate monomer classes (vinyl monomers and ring-strained cyclic olefins) via living photopolymerization. The living character of the polymerization technique (metal-free photo-ROMP) is demonstrated by consecutive chain-extensions. Further, we propose a mechanism for the copolymerization and analyze the copolymer structure in detail by high-resolution mass spectrometry.