TOPOCHEMICAL RATIONALIZATION OF THE SOLID-STATE POLYMERIZATION REACTION OF SODIUM CHLOROACETATE - STRUCTURE DETERMINATION FROM POWDER DIFFRACTION DATA BY THE MONTE-CARLO METHOD

It has been known for a long time that, at sufficiently high temperatu re, solid sodium chloroacetate undergoes a polymerization reaction to produce polyglycolide and sodium chloride. However, an understanding o f this reaction and its mechanism was not previously possible, as sodi um chloroacetate is microcrystalline and structural information could not be determined from conventional single-crystal X-ray diffraction m ethods. In this paper, we report the structure of sodium chloroacetate ; this advance has been possible through the application of new method ology, based on Monte Carlo sampling techniques, that we have develope d recently for crystal structure determination from powder diffraction data. The reported structure of sodium chloroacetate provides a direc t rationalization, based on topochemical principles, of the polymeriza tion reaction to produce polyglycolide.