100th Anniversary of Macromolecular Science Viewpoint: Heterogenous Reversible Deactivation Radical Polymerization at Room Temperature. Recent Advances and Future Opportunities

Abstract

Heterogenous reversible deactivation radical polymerization (RDRP) has become an important method for the preparation of a diverse set of well-defined polymer materials in dispersed systems. Conducting heterogeneous RDRP at room temperature seems to be a minor adjustment in polymerization technique but this will lead to a great opportunity for functional polymer synthesis, developing of interesting heterogeneous RDRP systems, and better mechanistic insights into heterogeneous RDRP. In this Viewpoint, we highlight some recent advances of room-temperature heterogeneous RDRP that are challenging to achieve via traditional thermally initiated heterogeneous RDRP. We hope that this Viewpoint can provide some inspiration for both experts in this field and new comers, as well as nonexperts who are interested in preparing their own polymer materials by conducting room-temperature heterogeneous RDRP.

Probing Thermoresponsive Polymerization-Induced Self-Assembly with Variable-Temperature Liquid-Cell Transmission Electron Microscopy

“…Reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization 30 is often employed in PISA to impart control of polymerization rates and chain lengths. 31,32 PISA can operate under emulsion and dispersion conditions. 33 For the dispersion approach in aqueous solution, a hydrophilic polymer is chain-extended with a monomer that is initially water-soluble but forms a hydrophobic polymer.…”

In situ monitoring of PISA morphologies

“…[5][6][7][8] In particular, polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA) has been used as a versatile method to obtain block copolymer particles in a highly tunable fashion at high concentrations. 9,10 During PISA, a solvophilic precursor polymer is chain extended with a monomer that forms a solvophobic block. At a certain critical degree of polymerization (DP) of the solvophobic block, aggregation becomes energetically favorable and causes assembly of the polymer chains into multimolecular aggregates.…”

Efficient Access to Inverse Bicontinuous Mesophases via Polymerization-Induced Cooperative Assembly

“…As a complementary method to solution self-assembly, polymerizationinduced self-assembly (PISA) has gained much attention recently. 6,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] PISA combines polymerization and in situ self-assembly of BCPs and can be conducted at high concentrations. As such, PISA has gained widespread use in the preparation of polymer particles of various morphologies by employing controlled/living polymerization techniques.…”