Low unsaturation polyether synthesized by bimetallic cyanide complex catalysts

A new kind of bimetallic cyanide complex (DMC) catalysts was made and developed by reaction aqueous solution of zinc chloride and potassium ferricyanide with complexing reagents to form a precipitate of the DMC compound. For obtaining favorable catalyst activity, the organic complexing reagents such as t-butanol and poly ether were employed. The complexing reagents were incorporated into the catalyst structure, and were required for active catalysts. Seven kinds of polyether with M_n^̄ 2000-15300 were synthesized by the Fe-Zn DMC catalysts. The structure and properties of polyether were analyzed and characterized by GPC, FTIR, ¹³C-NMR. The results showed that the polyether prepared by Fe-Zn DMC catalysts was of low unsaturation, high relative molecular mass, narrow relative molecular mass distribution compared with that prepared by traditional KOH catalysts. High resolution ¹³C-NMR analytical results showed that head-tail addition and atactic structure was dominant in polyether microstructure which were made by these DMC catalysts.