1984 Volume 41 Issue 7 Pages 421-424
Copolymerizations of polar vinyl monomers such as methyl methacrylate (MMA), methyl acrylate (MA), acrylonitrile (AN), metbacrylonitrile, and methyl vinyl ketone with electron donating monomers such as styrene, isoprene, 1-hexene, and vinyl acetate have been carried out in the presence of boron trichloride, in toluene at 0°C in dark with benzoyl peroxide as initiator. Alternating copolymers were obtained in the MMA-styrene, the MMA-isoprene, and the MA-styrene systems, using boron trichloride in a molar ratio 0.1 with respect to the polar vinyl monomers. The isoprene units in the MMA-isoprene alternating copolymer took 1, 4-structures without cross-linking. In other copolymerization systems, no copolymers were pre-pared. In a terpolymerization of the AN-MMA-styrene system using boron trichloride, AN exhibited strong retardation of the copolymerization.
