On December 12th, Ekaterina Medentseva and Maksim Zotkin had an important events both for them personally and for our lab.

The day began with Ekaterina defending her thesis "Synthesis and study of the catalytic activity of Pd complexes with carbene ligands in the vinyl-addition polymerization of norbornene derivatives". This topic has become one of the most rapidly developing ones in our lab, and Ekaterina presented the latest results on the catalysts design. The presentation attracted a significant attention as the discussion reached its critical duration. Ekaterina performed her presentation brilliantly and managed to provide meaningful answers for the majority of questions. Ekaterina has become Ph.D in Polymer Science.

In the afternoon, norbornenes day was continued by Maxim Zotkin and his Ph.D thesis "Synthesis and study of the properties of polynorbornenes with carbocyclic substituents". This work represents the "golden classic" of theses by our laboratory which included intensive synthetic work along with the comprehensive study of polymers properties. It seemed like synthetic part was the most challenging and was connected with the need for search of appropriate synthetic pathways towards norbornenes with large carbocyclic substituents. However, we believe this paid off with a rich spectra of promising data on sorption and gas transport properties of the related polymers.

The members of the the dissertation council highlighted an impressive level of both works and confident reports by Ekaterina and Maksim. That was a pleasure to hear for every member of our team.

We know that was a long and exhausting way for both Katya and Max. Their scientific supervisors (Jane Bermesheva and Dmitry Alentiev, who's smiling in front of the Christmas tree on the picture below after having the 2nd Ph.D theses defended under his supervision) also did a great job full of challenges and breakthroughs.

We congratulate everyone who took part in this success. And we wish Katya and Max an inspiring chapters of their professional life after that day.

From November 18 to 22, our team took part in the conference "Chemistry of Organoelement Compounds and Polymers - 2024" organized by our friends and colleagues from the A.N. Nesmeyanov Institute of Organoelement Compounds of the Russian Academy of Sciences (INEOS RAS).

Maxim Bermeshev presented an extensive report on norbornene polymers suitable for membrane gas separation. A significant part of such polymers were synthesized in our lab. Posing the key challenges and approaches, the report has become a kind of general introduction into the works of other members of our team.

Namely, Jane Bermesheva presented the report on the difficulties of designing and synthesizing single-component catalysts for vinyl-addition polymerization of norbornenes. Alena Wozniak showed the effect of spiro fragments in the composition of polynorbornenes on the efficiency of carbon dioxide extraction from gas mixtures. Alexander Morontsev attracted a lot of attention with his presentation devoted to the metathesis polymerization of alkyl norbornenes and hydrogenation of the resulting polymer products. Our Ph.D. student Petr Lezhnin tried himself as an oral speaker, presenting the results of his work devoted to the bis-silylation of norbornadiene.

Our team was happy to visit our neighbors from INEOS. We would like to warmly thank the organizers of this event for the excellent work and for the opportunity to present our latest achievements in front of the leading specialists.

On November 1st, A.V. Topchiev Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis of Russian Academy of Sciences (TIPS RAS) celebrated it's 90th Birthday. We feel proud of being a part of such a reputable and well-known organisation famous for it's scientific school and innovative approaches in different areas of chemical science.

The anniversary was marked by a ceremonial meeting of the Academic Council of TIPS RAS. The meeting was attended by most of the staff of the institute along with many respected guests and friends of TIPS RAS. The event took place at the Central House of Scientists, one of the oldest mansions located in the heart of Moscow.

Our team sincerely enjoyed the celebration and joins in all the congratulations to the Institute!

From October 28th to November 1st, our postgraduate student Petr took part in the IV Scientific Conference "Dynamic Processes in the Chemistry of Organoelement Compounds". It was held at the A. E. Arbuzov Institute of Organic and Physical Chemistry in Kazan.

Petr presented the study of the reaction conditions for obtaining di-silicon-substituted norbornenes in a single-step process. Organoelement part of the work was accompanied by the investigation of the activity of the compounds obtained in polymerization.

Noteworthy, it was Petr's first oral presentation at a scientific conference. We believe, that was as much epic as every day of working with Petr in our lab.

Thanks to the organisation commitee and colleagues for these insightful days!

From October 7th to 12th, Norbornene lab took part at the largest Russian Chemical Conference – Mendeleev Congress on General and Applied Chemistry! The event took place at Sirius, which is located on the Black Sea coast.

Jane Bermesheva reported on design of new single-component Ni- and Pd-based catalysts for vinyl-addition polymerization of cycloolefins. This topic is the continuation of the series of works on the design on the effective catalysts for norbornenes polymerization. Hopefully the details will be published soon.

Maxim had a presentation on macromolecular design of polymer membrane materials based on substituted norbonenees. In his report Maxim discussed the current state of studies and suggested the prospects for the future development.

A large number of participants, many meetings with friends, paradisiacal weather, warm sea and beautiful mountains were kindly provided by the organizing committee!

We want to thank organizers and personnel of the Mendeleev congress for their professionalism and wonderfully performed job and colleagues for the insightful discussions!

The intriguing meeting, Euromembrane-2024, was held in Prague, Czech Republic, at the beginning of September.

The latest results of our lab on new polymer membrane materials for CO₂-separartion processes have been presented in the oral and poster presentations by Maxim and Jane.

Many thanks to organizing committee for the excellent and warm meeting, the sea of high-quality beer and the beautiful venue!

The design and properties of porous polymers for sustainable membrane gas separations have been reviewed in two articles published by Prof. Lu Shao’s group with our group’s coauthorship.

These comprehensive reviews cover the recent progress in the development of polymer of intrinsic microporosity, thermally rearranged polymers and other related polymers as well as composites based on such polymers.

The reviews also provide the useful roadmap for the discovery of new high-performance polymer materials for membrane gas separation applications, in particular carbon dioxide and hydrogen separation from industrial gas streams.

You can access the reviews in Separation and Purification Technology and Chemical Engineering Journal

September 26th has become a significant day for our team. This day was celebrated by the Ph.D. thesis defense of Fedor Andreyanov and Marina Guseva.

During the morning session of TIPS RAS dissertation council Fedor presented his work "Synthesis and gas transport properties of silicon-containing polymers based on 5-norbornen-2-ylmethanol". The work proposes simple and effective methods for the synthesis of silicon-substituted norbornenes containing Si-O-C fragments. Subsequent polymerization allowed Fedor to evaluate the influence of the environment of the silicon atom on the gas separation properties of the polymers.

As a result, Fedor was given the degree of Ph.D. in Polymer Science!

In the afternoon, Marina continued following the successful wave. She presented her work "Stereoselective synthesis and polymerization of Si- and Ge-containing exo-derivatives of norbornenes". During this work Marina investigated the reactions of catalytic hydrosilylation and hydrogermylation of norbornadiene-2,5 with commercially available hydrosilanes and hydrogermanes of various structures. As a result, a series of highly reactive monomers with preferably exo-orientation of substituents was obtained. The study of the polymers based on the obtained compounds made it possible to evaluate the influence of the nature and orientation of substituents on gas permeability and gas separation selectivity.

Consequently, Marina also got het Ph.D. degree in Polymer Science.

We send our warm congratulations to both Fedor and Marina along with their scientific supervisors Maxim V. Bermeshev and Dmitry A. Alentiev.

On September 2nd-6th, St. Petersburg State University held the the XIII International Conference on Chemistry for Young Scientists "Mendeleev 2024". This year's conference celebrates the 300th anniversary of the University and Russian Academy of Sciences.

The detail that keeps this conference unique is the language. The official language of the conference is English. Despite the conference takes place in Russia, and the majority of participants are local, it is still important to keep the speaking skills fluent. However, sometimes it's challenging for young scientists.

Norbornene lab participated in the section "Modern trends in Polymer Science". Valeriia Nazemutdinova gave a poster presentation "Synthesis of dimers, trimers, tetramers and pentamers of 5-n-butylnorbonene by ROMP in the presence of the 1^st and 2^nd generation Grubbs catalyst. Hydrogenation of metathesis polymerization products". The work behind the presentation had been performed as the basis of the Valeriia's graduate work and devoted to the development of effective motor oils based on metathesis polynorbornenes.

Gleb Karpov came with a oral presentation "Palladium complexes with phosphine-thioether ligans for vinyl-addition polymerization of norbornene and its derivatives". That was the first oral presentation on that topic. That was challenging to adapt the results for the audience with different scientific interests. However, the presentation went good enough.

Also we want to notice a very special venue of the conference. The conference took place in a new campus of SPBU called Mikhailovskaya Dacha. That is a unique historical place combining classic architecture and innovations, natural landscape and advanced technologies. Despite the location being a bit far from the city center, the whole trip delivered lots of positive emotions.

Thanks to the organisation commitee, colleagues, volunteers and everyone who was a part of the event. Looking forward to the next edition!

The recent developments of our lab in the field of polymers for membrane gas separation processes were presented by Maxim Bermeshev and Jane Bermesheva at the 14th Conference of the Aseanian Membrane Society (AMS14).

A lot of new contacts and hot discussions were held in the south of China (Nanjing, China) from 07/23/2024 to 07/26/2024.

Thanks to the organizing committee for the pleasant meeting and the great tour of the membrane manufacturing plant.

A new example showing the critical influence of isomerism on gas separation performance was published in Advanced Functional Materials by our lab and our colleagues from Lab 18 of TIPS RAS and MSU.

Vinyl-addition polynorbornenes containing oxirane-moieties at spiro centers exhibited both high CO₂-permeability with remarkable selectivities for separation of carbon dioxide from its mixtures with nitrogen and methane, while the isomeric polymers bearing oxirane moieties at the ends of side chains had significantly lower CO₂-permeability and CO2/gas selectivities.

The data for CO₂/CH₄ separation for the polymers with oxirane-moieties at spiro centers are above or close to Robeson upper bound of 2018 for mixed gases.

Check the full paper in Advanced and functional materials.

On July 4th to 10th, our team took part in the the International Scientific and Practical Conference “New Polymer Composite Materials. Mikitaevsky readings". The conference located in the village of Elbrus and the highest mountain of Russia.

Maxim Zotkin presented his results on microporous materials based on polynorbornenes with carbocyclic substituents. Fedor Andreyanov gave a presentation called "Synthesis and gas transport properties of silicon-containing polymers on based on 5-norbornenyl-2-methanol". The work behind these two presentations was put into the basis of Maxim's and Fedor's PhD theses which, we expect, are going to be defended in the upcoming months.

Dmitry Alentiev, who was our team's pioneer attending the conference for the first time two years ago, brought very interesting results on the membranes based on polynorbornenes with specific interaction of carbon dioxide with polymer matrix.

The excellent organization of the conference and the stunning location of the event contribute to the generation of new ideas for cooperation between laboratories.

On May 24th, Norbornene lab held its annual meeting. The event takes a very special place in our calendar as our internal conference.

The agenda of the meeting was devoted to our young colleagues, who presented their recent results. The main idea is to prepare a presentation that delivers a clean understanding of the scientific problems touched in the work along with possible solutions that are put into the basis of the work. Despite working together on a daily basis, sometimes the actual scientific focus of each member gets lost. Such meetings help us understand our key directions for development and the new ideas and approaches that different members of the team bring to our toolbox.

Each presentation was followed by a detailed discussion during the meeting and afterwards. We believe that was helpful for the upcoming defending of coursework and PhD theses.

Maxim Bermeshev took part in ISOS-20/ASIS-9 conference in Hiroshima, Japan. This conference is the largest International Symposium on Silicon Chemistry.

Maxim presented the latest results on a new direction of our lab – bis-silylation of cycloalkenes. Thanks to Organizing committee for the very warm welcome and this great conference! There were many interesting meetings with colleagues and new acquaintances.

The photo shows Maxim and Evgeniya Bermesheva with Prof. G. Nikonov (Canada) and Prof. V. Lee (Japan) in front of the Grand Torii Gate, Itsukushima Shrine.

Recently a new paper was published in Journal of Membrane science.

The study shows that simple polymer structures can demonstrate high efficiency. The simplest vinyl-addition polynorbornenes with ester groups turned out to be effective membrane materials for separating carbon dioxide from methane and nitrogen.

The properties of such polymers can be improved if the pendant ester groups are correctly attached to the polymer backbone. In this case, the notorious anti-bate relationship between permeability and selectivity is violated (the higher the permeability, the lower the selectivity and vice versa) and both permeability and selectivity are significantly increased.

Learn more in Journal of Membrane Science.

The Russian science foundation digest presents an interview with Eugenia Bermesheva about the development of single-component catalysts for the vinyl-addition polymerization of cycloolefins.

You can learn about how these catalysts help in the creation and development of new polymer materials in the digest (pages 50-52).

P.S. Don't mind the white coats on the photos. You know that hard work always leaves marks. So these coats were prepared exclusively for beautiful photographs :)

On the April 8-26th, Lomonovos Moscow state university held the traditional Lomonosov conference for young scientists. Every year our young colleagues take part in the conference and attract much attention.

This year our graduate student Valeria Nazemutdinova attended the conference with the report "Synthesis of metathesis and hydrogenated oligomers of 5-n-butylnorbornene". The work behing this presentation is dedicated to the development of new synthetic oils based on petroleum by-products.

We're happy to announce that Valeria took the award for the best poster presentation in Polymer section. That is a great honor for the whole team.

Congratulations!

theOn April 8-12th, A.V. Topchiev Institute of Petrochemical synthesis of Russian academy of Sciences held a conference dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the Instutute. As a part of the institute, our lab proudly presented the results of the last few years.

Norbornene lab joined the conference with 10 reports. Along with the long-term results on membrane materials based on norbornene derivatives or Pd-catalysts for vinyl addition polymerization, some fresh topic were presented. Namely, recent results on influence of phosphines on vinyl addition polymerization of norbornene derivatives were reported for the first time. These data will be out later this year in an upcoming paper.

The whole team sends the warmest congratulations to Marina Guseva for taking the award for the best oral presentation in Polymer section. Marina's report on a simple method of synthesis of exo-substituted norbornene derivatives via hydrosilylation reaction attracted much interest last few weeks since Marina also is going to defend her PhD thesis on the related topic soon.

In the end, we want to thank everyone who took part in the organisation of the conference.

One of the key directions of our investigations is the rational design of effective catalysts for vinyl-addition polymerization (VAP) of various norbornene derivatives. In the last 5 years, our team together with the colleagues from TIPS RAS managed to significantly expand the scope of research on Pd-catalysts for VAP. Sequential optimization of the structures of NHC-Pd complexes led to the formation of ultra-active catalytst that made the control of vinyl-addition polymerization much more accessible. An understanding of key principles of the mechanism of polymerization led to attempts of development of single-component Pd catalytst for VAP.

In the current review published in ChemCatChem, the head of our lab Maxim Bermeshev together with Eugenia Bermesheva discussed the recent advances in this area and poses key directions for the upcoming development of such catalysts.

Definitely must-read. The review has open an access option.

Recently our team published a research paper on another approach to the synthesis of silicon-containing polynorbornenes using post-modification of poly(5-ethylydene)-2-norbornene. The results were presented in Polymer Chemistry.

The main idea is a straightforward and efficient method for synthesizing various silicon-containing vinyl-addition polynorbornenes by hydrosilylation of side chains in a parent polymer containing vinyl groups. A huge effort was put into the search for efficient catalysts for hydrosilylation. Traditional Karstedt's catalysts exhibited high activity, but provided insoluble products. In turn, the application of less active (NHC)Pt catalytst led to the formation of soluble products. Optimizing the catalyst's structure made it possible to find the most efficient (NHC)Pt-catalyst among the studied complexes.

This catalyst allowed us to reach high selectivities and conversions (>90%) of vinyl groups in PVNB.

Our huge congratulations to Alyona Wozniak, Evgenia Bermesheva and the whole team!

December 7th became another significant day for our lab. Vsevolod Zhigarev presented his fundamental work on synthesis and post-modification of silicon-containing poly(tricyclodecadienes). As a result of the presentation, Vsevolod defended his PhD thesis.

The realization of a promising idea underlying in the basis of the Vsevolod's work has turned out to bring a lot of challenges. We suffice to say each of the results obtained was achieved through hard work. That makes the outcome even more valuable. The presentation went well as Vsevolod managed to keep confidence and calmness during his tals. Our warm congratulations to Vsevolod!

You can also check the most significant publications on the topic in Polymers, European Polymer Journal and Polymer Science Series C.

Winter came to Moscow with a huge snowstorm last weekend. So the first monday of winter season was full of charming impressions.

It's time for a final push to finish the year strong. One of the keys to the strength is a monday delivery of liquid nitrogen to the lab. Our team can do that despite any weather surprises.

Enjoy the winter and it's upcoming weekends!

Our researchers have found a new way to involve bromo-substituted norbornenes in vinyl-addition polymerization.

It was presiously shown that bromo-substituted norbornenes are inactive in homopolymerization reactions. Earlier the related polymers were synthesized via copolymerization with active norbornene-type monomers.

In the present study norbornene lab group successfully studied the reactivity of bromine-containing norborenes in the vinyl-addition polymerization. A series of the monomers with varied spacing between the norbornene backbone and the bromine atom were involved in the polymerization. One of the keys to success was the application of one- and three-component Pd-based systems bearing N-heterocyclic carbene ligands.

These polymers can subsequently be used as precursors for the production of anion-exchange membranes with a large proportion of ionogenic groups.

The related results were published in Polymers.

On November 13-17 th, three members of Norbornene lab presented TIPS RAS on the "Modern problems of polymer science" conference. The conference took place in the historical building of Russian academy of sciences in Saint-Petersburgh.

Gleb Karpov presented preliminary results on new palladium catalysts for polymerization on poster session. Alexander Morontsev attended the conference with a poster presentation on metathesis olygomerization of 5-n-butylnorbornene in the presence of dimethylmaleate. Vsevolod Stepanyants had his debut with oral presentation on tandem process of metathesis polymerization-hydrogenation of cyclic oligomers. Young Vsevolod did his best preparing the talk and himself (check his suit). Huge congratulations!

Despite Saint-Petersburgh is believed to be a capital of dark and grey vibes in Russia, we spent a fun time at the city. Many thanks to the organizers for a warm welcome.

On October 8-12th, Maxim, Dmitry and Peter presented their recent works on the development of polymers and membrane materials based on organosilicon monomers at the 9-th Bakeev all-Russian conference for young scientists "Macromolecular nanoobjects and polymer composites".

The conference took place at Tula State Pedagogical University named by Lev Tolstoy, who was a famous Russian writer. Couldn't miss the opportunity of taking a photo with Tolstoy's charachter.

The recent results obtained in our lab were presented in the conference "Baikal Readings 2023"by Maxim B. and Jane B. The conference took place near the pearl of the world – Lake Baikal.

Jane gave a short report on the recent advances in development of single-component catalysts for vinyl-addition polymerization of norbornene derivatives. Maxim presented a traditional introducing lecture on polymeric materials based on norbornene-type monomers.

Thanks to Organizing Committee for the excellent organization and the nice venue!

Maxim Bermeshev and Jane Bermesheva took part in the conference "Ideas and Legacy of A.E. Favorsky in Organic Chemistry", which was held in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Maxim gave an invited lecture on the targeted design of polymeric membrane materials derived from norbornenes.

Jane gave an oral talk describing recent advances the group has made toward the development of single-component catalysts for vinyl-addition polymerization. Fresh results of our team in this direction were recently published in ACS Catalysis. Moreover, we're preparing a review on the topic of Jane's talk.

Hopefully next time we'll be able to announce the upcoming lectures of our leading specialists.

On May 22-27th, Artem Lunin and Alyona Wozniak took part in the conference "Ion Transport in Organic and Inorganic Membranes".

Artem gave an oral talk devoted to polymeric ionic liquids based on vinyl-addition homo- and copolymers of 5-hexyl-2-norbornene and 5-(4-bromobutyl)norbornene. Various physicochemical properties of the synthesized polymers were studied. This work is a part of Artem's graduate work that's planned to be defended next summer. Moreover, that was the first oral talk for Artem on such conference. Congrats on well-prepared presentation and confident report!

Alyona presented her results on anion-exchange membranes based on quaternized vinyl-addition poly(5-vinyl-2-norbornene). This work is an extension of her Ph.D thesis defended last year dedicated to synthesis post-modification of vinyl-addition poly(5-alkylidene-2-norbornene) derivatives. It was shown that increasing the molar fraction of hydrophilic moities in copolymer leads to a significant increase in conductivity. The results were obtained in cooperation with the colleagues from Kurnakov Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry.

Norbornene lab received funding from the Russian Science Foundation to support our work in the development of Pd-based catalytic systems for norbornene/ethylene copolymerization. That's the first project to be led by Gleb Karpov. Congrats!

Thank you to RSF for your generous support!

Dmitry Alentiev attended an annual scientific-practical conference "New polymer composites – Mikitaev's Readings" held in Kabardino-Balkaria (Russia), near Elbrus.

Dmitry gave an oral lecture on the latest advances in designing membrane materials based on vinyl-addition polynorbornenes with oxygen-containing substituents. In the lecture, he summarized the relationships between the chemical structure of these polymers and their gas transport properties found in the recent studies carried out by Norbornene lab in collaboration with the membrane center of TIPS RAS.

Noteworthy, Dmitry attends the conference for the second year in a row. It looks like a solid recommendation by one of the key team members.

Long term effort of our team led to a new publication. Our article on the development of nadimides-based vinyl-addition polymers as gas separation membranes for CO2-removal was recently published in Journal of Membrane Science.

A series of racemic and chiral nadimides synthesized by Ivan Nazarov were obtained and characterized. A joint effort of our colleagues from Lab#22 (Maxim Topchiy, Andrey Asachenko) and our specialists on catalysis And polymerization (Ekaterina Medentseva, Anna Khrychikova, Evgeniya Bermesheva, Alyona Wozniak) resulted in series of new polymeric materials that have previuosly been out of reach. Thanks to TIPS RAS Membrane Center new correlations between polymer structure and its membrane properties were found. Particularly, VAP polynorbornene with fluoroaryl-groups in imides moieties exhibited the combination of high CO₂ permeability with attractive CO₂/N₂ and CO₂/CH₄ selectivities.

Find out more in the full text available in the Journal of Membrane Science.

Congratulations to the whole team!

Nothing serious. Just a new poster portraying our team members as cartoon characters :)
You might've noticed familiar faces along with a new ones. That means we have new members to introduce. Check out the updates soon!

Credits to Fedor Andreyanov for design and patience. Yes, that work demanded loads of version to please every member :)

We have just received a grant from Russian Science Foundation to investigate polymers based on chiral norbornenes. By the way, a portion of interesting results on the related topic is going to be out soon in the Journal of Membrane Science.

Thanks RSF for supporting our research!

On March 31st, several members of our lab visited Harz Labs company, the leading 3D printing materials company in Russia.

Thanks to Dr. Pavel Chapala for the invitation and for hosting the visit!

Lab 10 received funding from Russian Science Foundation (RSF) to support our work in the development of new synthetic motor oils.

Thanks to RSF for your generous support!

Our team has worked long on new type of polynorbornenes bearing rigid carbocyclic substituents in side chains. The results were published in Polymer journal.

Four sets of polymers from norbornene-type monomers with various carbocyclic groups were prepared to perform the structure-property study and to evaluate the effect of main- and side-chains on the porosity of resultant polymers.The obtained polymers exhibited large BET surface areas (up to 740 m²/g), while CO₂ and H₂ uptake reached 3.0 and 0.18 mmol/g, correspondingly. The combination of comparatively simple synthesis, high porosity and solubility in organic solvents can be considered as a key advantage of the synthesized polymers.

We're preparing another set of results on the topic. In the meantime we congratulate Maxim Zotkin on his first research paper!

On the 9th February, on the day of Russian Sciences, Dmitry Alentiev and Alyona Wozniak from our lab together with our colleague Andrey Asachenko were given the Prize of Moscow government.

The award was presented for the development of approaches to the synthesis of functional polynorbornenes, promising materials for membrane gas separation. That has become the result of the last 5 years of dedication to organometalic chemistry, catalysis and polymerization procedures. NHC-Pd complexes developed by Andrey Asachenko and his team made synthesis of new specific polynorbornenes simplier than ever. Alyona Wozniak's effort was focused on the assesment of catalytic activity of Pd-NHC complexes in norbornenes polymerization. A wide set of polymers based on 5-ethylydene-2-norbornene and other bifunctional monomers was obtained due to extraordinary selectivity of the new catalysts. That opened the way to a new series of polynorbornenes synthesized as a result of various post-modifications. With the help of such effective catalysts Dmitry Alentiev managed to obrain new silicon containing polynorbornenes being one of the attractive membrane materials to date.

We're proud of our colleagues.

Our team has developed new generation of single component catalysts for vinyl-addition polymerization of norbornenes. The paper was published in ACS Catalysis.

We have shown that cationic Pd-complexes with N-heterocyclic carbene ligands and weak coordinating anion ligands are highly efficient single-component catalysts for polymerization of both norbornene and various substituted norbornenes. These complexes, being stable in the solid state and in solutions, have exhibited several important features as VAP catalysts. They are capable of catalyzing VAP of norbornenes in air and are tolerant to functional groups. The complexes have shown high catalytic activity and have allowed polymerizing monomers at very low catalyst loadings, as low as 2 ppm.

Read more in the full paper in ACS Catalysis

The work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation and the State Program of TIPS RAS.

Last week Dmitriy, Fedor, Max and Andrey attended a major meeting of specialists in membrane science "Membranes-2022". The conference took place in Tula region on 26-29th September.

Dmitry had oral presentation about promising membrane materials for CO2 separation based on vinyl/addition polynorbornenes bearing ester fragments in side chain. The presentation was based on Dmitry's recent paper in Journal of Membrane science.

Max also had oral presentation. His recent progress in synthesis of norbornene-based polymers with carbocyclic substituents in side chain gain much attention. The material of Max's presentation is going to be published soon.

Fedor was lucky to have a poster presentation (which was completed successfully few hours before the departure to the conference). His significant effort on membrane materials based on organosilicon derivatives of 5-norbornene-2-methanol was recently published in Polymer.

Andrey presented the results he obtained in the Kurnakov Institute of General and inorganic chemistry during his course work.

We believe the guys had a good time, as the picture shows :)

On June 17th our team gathered all together for the annual seminar. Main focus of the meeting laid in the recent research progress of our young collaborators.

Marina Guseva and her student Petr presented new results on exo-selective synthesis of norbornene derivatives via hydrosylilation reaction. Major questions touched the catalysts choice and possible mechanism of the reaction. Fedor Andreyanov and his younger colleague Artem reported synthesis and properties of new polymers derived from 5-norbornene-2-methanol. Maxim Zotkin shared his progress in the synthesis of norbornene derivatives bearing carbocyclic substituents - promising class of membrane materials. Ivan Nazarov and his students presented huge synthetical work on optically active norbornene derivatives and their polymerization in the presence of optically active catalysts. Vsevolod Zhigarev completed the presenters team with recent results on olefin cross metathesis reaction and synthesis of multiblock copolymers.

We're proud of our young researchers and believe you'll see the results of their effort in upcoming papers.

On May 19th, our team member Gleb Karpov presented his research "Synthesis of fluorine-containing norbornene derivatives and its polymerization". The main focus of the investigation was put in the synthesis of tricyclononenes bearing different organofluorune fragments. The challenging task of obtaining soluble high-molecular weight metathesis polymers was successfully reached. Classical step to the synthesis of vinyl/addition fluoropolymers wasn't that easy in this case though. However, a new vinyl/addition polynorbornene bearing perfluorophenyl groups in side chains was prepared. Moreover, the search for active Pd-based catalytic systems for the polymerization led Gleb to revealing a new type of catalysts based on Pd(0) complexes activated by organic cocatalyst. New approach inspired by organic Pd-catalyzed coupling reaction of aryl (pseudo)halides consisted a solid part of PhD thesis presented by Gleb. Gas transport and dielectric properties of the polymers were studied. The analysis of the data obtained helped us establish new correlations between polymer structure and its properties.

Well done Gleb!