Determination of the structural arrangements of ketene oligomers using NMR, FT-IR and ESI-MS

Oligomer of ketene was synthesized using glycine as the source material in presence of free electron rich carbon through free radical mechanism. The structure and the compositions were determined by using ¹³C{¹H} NMR and DEPT – 135 spectroscopy measurements. Two-dimensional heteronuclear (HETCOR) NMR spectroscopy was used to resolve the ¹H NMR spectrum of the polymer. The NMR spectra reveal that the oligomers were generated as oligoester (OE), oligoketene (OK) and oligoacetal (OA) structural units. ESI-MS and ATR-FTIR also support these types of structural units in the crude polymer.