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Updated: Jun 13, 2025

Versatile CO2 Transformations into Complex Products: A One-pot Two-step Strategy
Published on: November 9, 2019
Reduction Polymerization of CO2 with Phenylene Silanes Catalyzed by Single Component B(C6F5)3
Wenhao He1,2, Bingwen Li3, Yuxuan Li1,2
1State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Renmin Street 5625, Changchun, 130022, China.
Abstract:
CO2 is an abundant C1 resource but a green-house gas and chemically inert. Thus, its utilization has been a promising but challenging project. Herein, we report the unprecedented polymerization of CO2 and C6H4(SiMe2H)2 using B(C6F5)3 alone under mild conditions to give poly(silphenylene siloxane) accompanied by releasing CH4. The copolymerization can be extended to comonomers of phenylene silanes bearing functional groups. Moreover, it combines with Piers-Rubinsztajn reaction to establish a tandem polymerization system to achieve super thermal resistant poly(siloxane-co-silphenylene siloxane)s. Density functional theory reveals that B(C6F5)3 is activated by silanes to form free HB(C6F5)2, which is the true active species for CO2 reducing to borylformate, the rate controlling step of the polymerization procedure. The subsequent multiple reductions of borylformate to CH4 and the step-growth to poly(silphenylene siloxane)s can be fulfilled by both B(C6F5)3 and HB(C6F5)2, and the former shows a slightly higher activity. This work opens a new avenue of utilizing CO2 to fabricate polysiloxanes that is unable to access using current manners.
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