Novel Approaches for the Synthesis of Polyacetylene Curing Agents

"Recent advances in explosives technology has created a need for new polymer binder technologies. One promising class of such new binders is based on blends of azido-terminated oligomers and multi-acetylene functionalized crosslinking agents. The Navy wouldlike to determine whether these new compositions offer promise in binder applications by studying the structure-activity relationships of these materials. Unfortunately, such studies have been hampered by the lack of availability of theacetylene-containing components. Thus, Navy has requested proposals for preparing 100-500 g quantities of four promising acetylene-containing compounds.This Phase I program addresses the Navy's requests by proposing the preparation of 500 g of each of the four requested acetylene derivatives. Routes that are well precedented in the chemical literature will be used to synthesize these materials. While twoof the proposed synthetic routes follow those used in Navy labs, the other two are highly novel and bypass the need for potentially explosive intermediates. The proposed acetylene compounds may find immediate application in explosives, initially for military uses and possible later for commercial explosive applications. Additionally, the di- nd triacetylene derivatives of this proposal might also findapplication as reactive additives to alter the properties of thermosetting polymers."