Tremendous developments on living or "controlled/living" polymerization technique have been achieved over the last couple of decades in polymer chemistry. Now living polymerizations have been developed through various intermediates, such as radical, cationic, anionic, or metal coordination polymerization. However, since chain-growth polymerization of vinyl monomers is implemented via appropriate active species depending on the monomer structure, there are always limitations of polymerizable monomers inherent to the mechanisms. An efficient and versatile mechanistic transformation reaction between different polymerizations would be a candidate for developing unprecedented copolymers. In this work, we examined reversible mechanistic transformation between two different active species during controlled/living polymerizations by using dormant covalent bonds, which have been used just for controlling the propagation. Especially, reversible mechanistic transformation of radical species was investigated from or into cationic species through C–S dormant species to accomplish concurrent and interconvertible living radical and cationic polymerization.

Interconvertible controlled/living radical and cationic polymerization via RAFT terminal

252nd National Meeting (2016)

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