Elastomers from Polymeric Chelates

In the previous work, we demonstrated that gels may be formed from polymeric acetylacetonate chelates. Now it has been shown that useful elastomers can be prepared from these derivatized polymers as well. Stress-strain measurements have been performed on these Pd(II) crosslinked SIR elastomers, and the results demonstrate that the materials are useful for physical testing. Because of unforeseen complications, we do not yet have a perfectly ideal system to solve fully the problems mentioned in the Introduction. The observations reported here are more than sufficient to encourage us to pursue this research vigorously. The difficult synthesis of ACAC-endcapped PDMS that has been achieved provides a viable route to model networks. What is required now is that we focus attention on the inorganic chemistry in an effort to better understand such things as the kinetics of ligand exchange reactions and the structure of ACAC complexes in low polarity media.