Lewis pair polymerization employing N-Heterocyclic olefins (NHOs) and simple metal halides as co-catalysts has emerged as a useful tool to polymerize diverse lactones. To elucidate some of the mechanistic aspects that remain unclear to date and to better understand the impact of the metal species, computational methods have been applied. Several key aspects have been considered: (1) the formation of NHO-metal halide adducts has been evaluated for eight different NHOs and three different Lewis acids, (2) the coordination of four lactones to MgCl₂ was studied and (3) the deprotonation of an initiator (butanol) was investigated in the presence and absence of metal halide for one specific Lewis pair. It was found that the propensity for adduct formation can be influenced, perhaps even designed, by varying both organic and metallic components. Apart from the NHO backbone, the substituents on the exocyclic, olefinic carbon have emerged as interesting tuning site. The tendency to form adducts is ZnCl₂ > MgCl₂ > LiCl. If lactones coordinate to MgCl₂, the most likely binding mode is via the carbonyl oxygen. A chelating coordination cannot be ruled out and seems to gain importance upon increasing ring-size of the lactone. For a representative NHO, it is demonstrated that in a metal-free setting an initiating alcohol cannot be deprotonated, while in the presence of MgCl₂ the same process is exothermic with a low barrier.
Keywords: Lewis pairs; N-heterocyclic olefins; density functional theory; polyesters.