Surfactants aided dissolution in water of hydrophobic Pd(II)- diphosphino complexes to efficiently catalyze the CO-ethene copolymerization

In the last decade, the catalysis of the perfectly alternated co-polymerization of carbon monoxide with ethene to the alt-poly(1-oxo-trimethylene) (called polyketone, PK) was an interesting topic for many researchers. In our previous studies we deeply investigate on the influence of the solvent in the catalytic activity of some Pd(II) complexes. In particular, we studied the influence of water by considering that it shows some interesting advantages: it is cheap, readily available, non-toxic, non-flammable, safe to environment, and in particular we have found that it favors the very high molecular weight copolymers. The influence of several surfactants on the solubility of Pd(II)-complexes has been reported in our previous paper. Here we report our preliminary results on the use of poly(b-naphtalene sulfonate) (PBN) as a surfactant solubilizing the hydrophobic Pd(II)-diphosphino catalyst in water.