Radical Additions to Alkenes Chain-Growth Polymers

What products would you expect from the following reactions (a) 

10 Radical Additions to Alkenes Chain-Growth Polymers 

In our brief introduction to radical reactions in Section 6.3, we said that radicals can add to C=C bonds, taking one electron from the double bond and leaving one behind to yield a new radical. Let s now look at the process in more detail, focusing on the industrial synthesis of alkene polymers. A polymer is simply a large—sometimes very large—molecule built up by repetitive bonding together of many smaller molecules, called monomers. 

Nature makes wide use of biological polymers. Cellulose, for instance, is a polymer built of repeating glucose monomer units proteins are polymers built 

Synthetic polymers, such as polyethylene, are chemically much simpler than biopolymers, but there is still a great diversity to their stmctures and properties, depending on the identity of the monomers and on the reaction conditions used for polymerization. The simplest synthetic polymers are those that result when an alkene is treated with a small amount of a suitable catalyst. Ethylene, for example, yields polyethylene, an enormous alkane that may have a molecular weight up to 6 million amu and may contain as many 

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A polymer that results from the rapid addition of one monomer at a time to a growing polymer chain, usually with a reactive intermediate (cation, radical, or anion) at the growing end of the chain. Most chain-growth polymers are addition polymers of alkenes and dienes, (p. 370)... 

Olefins (from the French olefiant, oil-forming ), or alkenes, are hydrocarbon molecules with at least one double carbon-carbon bond. Alpha (a-)olefins are alkenes with a double bond at the first (alpha-) carbon. Polyolefins are polymer molecules made using free radical or ionic initiators to open these reactive double bonds in an addition (chain-growth) polymerization, producing essentially linear high molecular weight thermoplastic polymers. 

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