Superior Cascade Ring-Opening/Ring-Closing Metathesis Polymerization and Multiple Olefin Metathesis Polymerization: Enhancing the Driving Force for Successful Polymerization of Challenging Monomers.

Recently, our group successfully developed two new polymerization methodologies for monomers containing two cycloalkene moieties. These polymerization methods yielded well-defined polymers via a combination of ring-opening and ring-closing metathesis (cascade polymerization) or ring-opening, ring-closing, and cross-metathesis (multiple olefin metathesis polymerization (MOMP)) using a second monomer. However, cascade polymerization had some limitations such as low polymerization efficiency (maximum turnover number (TON) of 250) and narrow monomer scope.