COBALOXIME AS A CATALYTIC CHAIN TRANSFER AGENT

In the reported experiments, cobaloxime, synthesized from Co**I**I acetate and dimethylglyoxime, was used as a chain transfer agent in the free radical polymerization of methyl methacrylate. It proved to be a catalytic chain transfer agent analogous to work recently reported on cobalt porphyrins. Chain transfer constants ranged from 10**3-10**4 and were chain length dependent. Catalytic behavior was demonstrated by calculating turnover numbers which showed that each cobaloxime molecule participated in many hundreds of chain transfer reactions.