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Updated: May 22, 2026

Fabricating Superhydrophobic Polymeric Materials for Biomedical Applications
Published on: August 28, 2015
Dehydration polycondensation of dicarboxylic acids and diols using sublimating strong brønsted acids
Takaya Moyori1, Tang Tang, Akinori Takasu
1Department of Frontier Materials, Graduate School of Engineering, Nagoya Institute of Technology , Gokiso-cho, Showa-ku, Nagoya 466-8555, Japan.
Abstract:
We investigated catalytic activities of strong brønsted acids for dehydration polycondensations of dicarboxylic acids and diols, which were carried out at low temperature (<100 °C) under reduced pressure (0.3-3 mmHg). Strong Brønsted acids, bis(perfluoroalkanesulfonyl)imide and perfluoroalkanesulfonic acid, showed higher activity than p-toluenesulfonic acid or rare-earth catalysts at 60 °C. In particular, bis(nonafluorobutanesulfonyl)imide (Nf(2)NH) showed the highest activity to synthesize not only aliphatic polyester (M(n) > 19000) but also aromatic polyester (M(n) > 7000). The used Nf(2)NH was sublimated from the reaction flask during polycondensation, and the sublimate, Nf(2)NH, was extra pure so that we can reuse the catalyst without loss of the activity in the dehydration polycondensations.
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