Difunctional terminated macromolecular monomers and condensation copolymers produced therefrom

Copolymerizable macromolecular monomers comprising linear polymers or copolymers having a substantially uniform molecular weight distribution such that the ratio of Mw/Mn is less than about 1.1, said macromolecular monomers being further characterized as having no more than one terminal moiety per linear polymer or copolymer chain, said terminal moiety having two identical functional groups of substantially equivalent reactivity in a condensation copolymerization, the macromolecular monomers being represented by the formula:

• ##STR11## wherein I is the residue of an alkali metal alkyl or alkali metal alkoxide monofunctional anionic initiator;
• Z represents a polymerized unit of at least one anionically polymerizable monomer;
• U is a capping agent which is the reaction product of a compound that is capable of reacting with the carbanion of a living polymer to produce another anion of sufficiently lower basicity than the carbanion of the original living polymer so as not to substantially react with the difunctional groups, W, of a halogen-containing terminating agent, from which the terminal moiety is formed, but sufficiently reactive to react with the halogen of the terminating agent;
• R is an aliphatic, aryl or aralkyl group;
• W is a member selected from the group consisting of CO.sub.2 H, COCl, CO.sub.2 R', NCO, SO.sub.2 Cl, OCOCl, OH, NH.sub.2 or SH, wherein R' is an alkyl group;
• and n is a positive integer such that the molecular weight of the macromolecular monomers is in the range of from about 2,000 to about 50,000.