The Kinetics of Polymerization

A comprehensive review is presented on the kinetics of polymerizations, as a summary of the studies on the polymerization kinetics performed in the authors' laboratory. Polymerizations were in the first place classified into several classes according to the relative magnitude of the rates of the elementary steps. The specific features of the kinetics were discussed by classifying into four main types, i. e., stationary polymerization with slow initiation, non-stationary polymerization with slow initiation, stationary polymerization with rapid initiation, and non-stationary polymerization with rapid initiation. The kinetic studies dealing with polymerizations of these classes were summarized and some problems in the kinetic studies were pointed out.