Brodie, C.N., Goodfellow, A.S. orcid.org/0000-0002-0064-5007, Andrews, M.J. et al. (3 more authors) (2024) Direct synthesis of partially ethoxylated branched polyethylenimine from ethanolamine. Nature Communications, 15. 6253. ISSN 2041-1723
Abstract
We report here a method to make a branched and partially ethoxylated polyethyleneimine derivative directly from ethanolamine. The polymerization reaction is catalysed by a pincer complex of Earth-abundant metal, manganese, and produces water as the only byproduct. Industrial processes to produce polyethyleneimines involve the transformation of ethanolamine to a highly toxic chemical, aziridine, by an energy-intensive/waste-generating process followed by the ring-opening polymerization of aziridine. The reported method bypasses the need to produce a highly toxic intermediate and presents advantages over the current state-of-the-art. We propose that the polymerization process follows a hydrogen borrowing pathway that involves (a) dehydrogenation of ethanolamine to form 2-aminoacetaldehyde, (b) dehydrative coupling of 2-aminoacetaldehyde with ethanolamine to form an imine derivative, and (c) subsequent hydrogenation of imine derivative to form alkylated amines.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2024. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Chemistry (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 23 May 2025 11:19 |
Last Modified: | 23 May 2025 11:19 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | Nature Research |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41467-024-50403-z |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:226391 |
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