Self-condensing, Vinyl Polymerization Strategies

The first strategies to random hyperbranched polymers involved exclusively step-growth polymerizations. This limited the potential applications for these architectures to areas where only condensation-type polymers are acceptable. Frechet et al. [21] presented the first example of a hyperbranched vinyl polymerization in 1995, ] initiating the birth of a second generation of hyperbranched 

The polymerization of AB -functional vinyl monomers is fundamentally different from the step-growth polymerization of AB2-monomers. Condensation of AB2-monomers results immediately in the formation of hyperbranched polymers since the reactivity of the end-groups are the same, regardless of what type of repeat unit (linear or dendritic) that is formed. 

The introduction of SCVP initiated extensive research focused on the use of vinyl monomers for the synthesis of hyperbranched polymers. More recently, 

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