Termination kinetics living radical polymerization

Most radicals are transient species. They (e.%. 1-10) decay by self-reaction with rates at or close to the diffusion-controlled limit (Section 1.4). This situation also pertains in conventional radical polymerization. Certain radicals, however, have thermodynamic stability, kinetic stability (persistence) or both that is conferred by appropriate substitution. Some well-known examples of stable radicals are diphenylpicrylhydrazyl (DPPH), nitroxides such as 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidin-A -oxyl (TEMPO), triphenylniethyl radical (13) and galvinoxyl (14). Some examples of carbon-centered radicals which are persistent but which do not have intrinsic thermodynamic stability are shown in Section 1.4.3.2. These radicals (DPPH, TEMPO, 13, 14) are comparatively stable in isolation as solids or in solution and either do not react or react very slowly with compounds usually thought of as substrates for radical reactions. They may, nonetheless, react with less stable radicals at close to diffusion controlled rates. In polymer synthesis these species find use as inhibitors (to stabilize monomers against polymerization or to quench radical reactions - Section 5,3.1) and as reversible termination agents (in living radical polymerization - Section 9.3). 

The kinetics and mechanism of living radical polymerization have been reviewed by Fischer,21 Fukuda et at.,22 and Goto and Fuktida.23 In conventional radical polymerization, new chains are continually formed through initiation w hile existing chains are destroyed by radical-radical termination. The steady state concentration of propagating radicals is 10"7 M and an individual chain will have a lifetime of only 1-10 s before termination within a total reaction lime that is... 

The number average molar mass, Mn, and molar mass distribution (MMD) are controlled by interplay of kinetic parameters, which will be described in more detail in Chapter 5. In principle there are two ways of terminating a growing chain bimolecular termination and transfer. These two modes of termination have led to the two main categories of living radical polymerization (a) reversible termination and (b) reversible chain transfer. 

If an overall conclusion could be made, it might be considered that the counterradicals vary considerably (Scheme 3). They can either be stable (e.g., nitroxyls, arylazooxyls), semi persistent (e.g., from thiourams) and also metallic (e.g., acetoacetato metals). In addition, if these radicals either terminate or transfer, non-living (or inactive) species will be produced. But, in order to preserve the living character, the radicals must propagate and in specific cases (e.g., iodine transfer polymerization or degenerative transfer) active species will be obtained. The more that one of these latter steps is favored, the more living is the tendency of the radical polymerization, with a very high kinetic control of this reaction. 

Radical polymerizations are almost always considered as kinetically stationary. However, the stationarity conditions are not always fulfilled. Living polymerizations with rapid initiation are stationary, but the character of the medium should not significantly change during polymerization in order to prevent shifts in the equilibria between ion pairs and free ions. All other polymerizations are non-stationary even, to some extent, living polymerizations with slow initiation. It is usually very difficult to define initiation and termination rates so as to permit exact kinetic analysis. When the concentration of active centres cannot be directly determined, indirect methods must be applied, and sometimes even just a trial search for best agreement with experiment. 

Living polymerizations are limited to the realm of chain-growth polymerizations, in which a monomer is transformed to a polymer by a reactive species (an initiator, I) via a kinetic chain reaction (Scheme 15.1). An intrinsic limitation of a typical chain-growth process, such as free-radical polymerization, is the occurrence of termination reactions that lead to the formation of dead chains, chains that are incapable of further growth. 

The most important difference between a living ionic polymerization which has no termination or transfer mechanism and free-radical or ionic processes that do have termination or chain transfer steps is that the distributions of the degrees of polymerization are quite different. The distribution function can be derived by a kinetic approach due to Flory [6], which is analogous to that used earlier for free-radical reactions (see Problem 6.44). However, in the present case with no chain termination the simplifying steady-state approximation cannot be used. 

Analysis of the kinetics of CRP reactions is more complex than for conventional radical polymerizations consequently, a detailed derivation of the basic equations will not be given here. The fundamental activation-deactivation pseudoequilibria that control the living characteristics of the various CRPs have been outlined in Equation 3.31 to Equation 3.33, and if the steady state is to be achieved rapidly, then the rates of activation and deactivation must be considerably larger than the rates of the initiation and termination reactions. In successful CRP reactions, the time taken to reach the equilibrium steady state is estimated to be in the range 1 to 100 ms. 

Additional well-defined side-chain liquid crystalline polymers should be synthesized by controlled polymerizations of mesogen-ic acrylates (anionic or free radical polymerizations), styrenes (anionic, cationic or free radical), vinyl pyridines (anionic), various heterocyclic monomers (anionic, cationic and metalloporphyrin-initiated), cyclobutenes (ROMP), and 7-oxanorbornenes and 7-oxanorbornadienes (ROMP). Ideally, the kinetics of these living polymerizations will be determined by measuring the individual rate constants for termination and... 

The three main requirements for an ideal SNR-mediated living/controlled free-radical polymerization are (i) essentially simultaneous initiation (ii) reversible reaction of SNR given in Eq. (11.10) and (iii) no important degree of irreversible termination, if any. Under these conditions, one would expect the system to be described by a simple kinetic scheme, as described below. 

The kinetics of free radical polymerization and the molecular weight distribution of the polymer were already discussed in Section 1.6.2 of Chapter 1. To improve the chemical and mechanical properties of the polymer great efforts were undertaken a number of years ago to achieve narrow distributions. This is possible with anionic or cationic — so-called living — polymerization, in which chains can not terminate or transfer and grow at a rather uniform rate, thus yielding a polymer with a polydispersity close to one. This type of polymerization requires very special operating conditions and high purity of the feed, however. 

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