Third-order susceptibilities of soluble polymers derived from the ring opening metathesis copolymerization of cyclooctatetraene and 1,5-cyclooctadiene

We wish to report some preliminary results on the nonlinear optical properties of a new class of polymers synthesized by the ring-opening metathesis polymerization of highly unsaturated monomers. Mixtures of cyclooctatetraene, 1, and 1,5-cyclooctadiene, 2, have been polymerized by using the tungsten carbene complex 3 as the catalyst (see Figure 1). The solution polymerization of monomers 1 and 2 in tetrahydrofuran leads to an essentially random coploymer. The monomers contain exclusively cis double bonds and no attempt has been made to isomerize the double bonds in the resulting polymer. The general constitution of the copolymers is also shown in Figure 1 (an all-trans geometrical configuration is shown for simplicity).