Patent ID: 8623980

Claim:
A process for making a substantially saturated dendritic hydrocarbon polymer, comprising the steps of: (a) polymerizing an amount of a first alkadiene monomer under anionic conditions in the presence of a first organic monolithium initiator to produce a linear polyalkadiene having a lithiated chain end; (b) reacting the linear polyalkadiene with an amount of a second organic monolithium initiator in the presence of tetramethylethylene diamine to form a multilithiated polyalkadiene having both a lithiated chain end and backbone; (e) reacting the multilithiated polyalkadiene with an amount of a second alkadiene monomer to react with the lithiated backbone to form a branched polyalkadiene; (d) repeating steps (b) and (c) with the branched polyalkadiene one or more times to prepare a dendritic polyalkadiene; and (e) hydrogenating the dendritic polyalkadiene to form the substantially saturated dendritic hydrocarbon polymer.