New Publication in ChemSusChem online!

Milestone in lactide chemistry!

The Herres-Pawlis group succeeded in the development of new zinc guanidine complexes. The synthesised complexes are air and moisture resistant and polymerise industrially used lactide to poly(lactide) within a few hours. In cooperation with the Liauw group (RWTH Aachen University) the kinetics of the polymerisation has been monitored in situ by Raman spectroscopy; the Jones group (University of Bath) helped to clarify the proceeding mechanism. Therefore these colourless and non-toxic catalysts provide a very good alternative to the previously industrially used and toxic tin-catalyst (tin-octanoate). The article Fast and robust: novel highly active N,O zinc guanidine catalysts for the ring-opening polymerisation of lactide is available on the webpage of the publisher.