Influence of structure and solubility of chain transfer agents on the RAFT control of dispersion polymerisation in scCO₂

Abstract

RAFT dispersion polymerisation of methyl methacrylate is performed in scCO2 with 2-(dodecylthiocarbonothioylthio)-2-methylpropionic acid (DDMAT) present as chain transfer agent (CTA) and surprisingly shows good control over PMMA molecular weight.

Exploiting the tuneable density of scCO2 to improve particle size control for dispersion polymerisations in the presence of poly(dimethyl siloxane) stabilisers

“…The autoclave setup used for polymerisations in scCO2 (Figure 1) has been described previously [22,45] in literature. For a typical reaction, an AIBN (0.0936 g) and PDMS-MA (0.468 g) mixture and MMA (10 ml) were degassed [46] by bubbling with argon in separate vials for 30 minutes.…”

Precipitation copolymerization of methyl methacrylate/meth‐acrylate acid in supercritical carbon dioxide

“…9 Due to the low solubility in CO 2 , most polymers can only be produced by heterogeneous polymerization, such as dispersion polymerization, 10 precipitation polymerization, [11][12][13] et al To the dispersion polymerization, the stabilizers are usually used to prevent the polymer particles from aggregation. For example, some monomers such as methyl methacrylate (MMA), styrene (St), N-vinylpyrrolidone (NVP), et al have been successfully polymerized by dispersion polymerization using fluorinated [14][15][16] or siloxane-based [17][18][19][20] polymers as the stabilizers. However, these stabilizers have potential environmental pollution problem, or high costs problem, which prohibits its wide application.…”