Acetyl Halide Initiator Screening for the Cationic Ring‐Opening Polymerization of 2‐Ethyl‐2‐Oxazoline

Abstract Kinetic investigations on the cationic ring‐opening polymerization of 2‐ethyl‐2‐oxazoline were conducted using acetyl chloride, acetyl bromide, and acetyl iodide as initiators. Various polymerization temperatures ranging from 80 to 220 °C were applied under microwave irradiation. The resulting polymerization mixtures were characterized with GC and GPC for the determination of monomer conversion and molecular weight distribution, respectively. Well defined polymers with narrow molecular weight distributions ( $\overline M _{{\rm n,GPC}}$ = 6 000 Dalton, PDI ≈ 1.10) were obtained with all three initiators. magnified image