Atom transfer radical polymerization active copper complexes

The need to better control surface-initiated polymerization recently led to the development of controlled radical polymerization techniques. The trick is to keep the concentration of free radicals low in order to decrease the number of side reactions. This is achieved by introducing a dormant species in equilibrium with the active free radical. Important reactions are the living radical polymerization with 2,2,4,4-methylpiperidine N-oxide (TEMPO) [439], reversible addition fragment chain transfer (RAFT) which utilizes so-called iniferters (a word formed from initiator, chain transfer and terminator) [440], and atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) [441-443]. The latter forms radicals by added metal complexes as copper halogenides which exhibit reversible reduction-oxidation processes. 

A parallel development was initiated by the first publications from Sawamoto and Matyjaszweski. They reported independently on the transition-metal-catalyzed polymerization of various vinyl monomers (14,15). The technique, which was termed atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP), uses an activated alkyl halide as initiator, and a transition-metal complex in its lower oxidation state as the catalyst. Similar to the nitroxide-mediated polymerization, ATRP is based on the reversible termination of growing radicals. ATRP was developed as an extension of atom transfer radical addition (ATRA), the so-called Kharasch reaction (16). ATRP turned out to be a versatile technique for the controlled polymerization of styrene derivatives, acrylates, methacrylates, etc. Because of the use of activated alkyl halides as initiators, the introduction of functional endgroups in the polymer chain turned out to be easy (17-22). Although many different transition metals have been used in ATRP, by far the most frequently used metal is copper. Nitrogen-based ligands, eg substituted bipyridines (14), alkyl pyridinimine (Schiff s base) (23), and multidentate tertiary alkyl amines (24), are used to solubilize the metal salt and to adjust its redox potential in order to match the requirements for an ATRP catalyst. In conjunction with copper, the most powerful ligand at present is probably tris[2-(dimethylamino)ethyl)]amine (Mee-TREN) (25). 

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