Potentials and Limitations of Automated Parallel Emulsion Polymerization

Abstract

The application of automated parallel synthesizer robots for the investigation of polymerization processes is of major interest at present. In this contribution we describe the application of the emulsion polymerization of styrene and vinyl acetate. The preparations of emulsions and latexes were investigated in detail and compared to “conventional” stirred tank reactors. In particular the influence of the vortex mixing as well as the limitations regarding solid content and reactor fouling are addressed. magnified image

Combinatorial Methods, Automated Synthesis and High‐Throughput Screening in Polymer Research: The Evolution Continues

“…[35] Emulsion polymerizations were performed in five parallel reactors utilizing well-defined systems of styrene and vinyl acetate, whereby the vortex speed was identified as an important parameter to obtain suitable emulsions. After optimization of the vortex speed, the results obtained for the emulsion polymerizations in the automated synthesizer were comparable with results from ''classical'' stirred batch reactors regarding the particle sizes of the obtained polystyrene particles.…”

Combinatorial and High‐Throughput Methods in Macromolecular Materials Research and Development

“…[22][23][24][25] They have demonstrated the parallel synthesis of polyoxazolines, [26][27][28] anionic polymerization, [22,29,30] emulsion polymerization, [31] the synthesis of polymers using controlled-radical polymerization methods such as atom-transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) [32][33][34][35][36] and reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT). [22,32,37,38] In addition, they have explored the synthesis of block copolymers, [39] star polymers, [40,41] and supramolecular polymers.…”

The fast and the curious: High‐throughput experimentation in synthetic polymer chemistry

“…28 The vortex speed turned out to be a very important parameter to obtain suitable emulsions. For different sizes of reactors in the automated synthesizer, the vortex speed had to be optimized separately.…”

“…Moreover, both free-and controlled radical polymerizations have been described in the literature. Alesso et al 27 synthesized several polystyrene beads via automated suspension free-radical polymerization of styrene and divinylbenzene, and Voorn et al 28 demonstrated the successful application of automated parallel methods to the emulsion polymerization of styrene and vinyl acetate. Other combinatorial and automated free-radical polymerizations in solution were reported by Gravert et al, 29 Lanza et al, 30,31 Williamson and Long, 32 as well as Symyx.…”