Recent years witnessed tremendous progress in various controlled radical polymerization procedures. They employ a dynamic equilibrium between growing free radicals and dormant species. This process enables taming uncontrolled free radical behavior by inserting a dormancy periods of a few seconds or minutes after ca 1 ms activity. Such an intermittent activation route extends life of propagating chains from ca. 1 s to several hours and days. It also permits precise synthesis of macromolecules with complex architecture from small functional molecules as building blocks. Some examples of new initiating and catalytic systems used at ppm amounts for ATRP (atom transfer radical polymerization) will be presented. They open avenues to new block, gradient, graft, star, brush and (hyper)branched functional (co)polymers  that find applications as various new advanced functional nanostructured materials.

From molecules to materials: Macromolecular engineering by taming free radicals

251st National Meeting (2016)

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