A side-on liquid crystalline monomer, 2,5-bis[(4-hexyloxyphenyl)oxycarbonyl]styrene) (HPCS), was successfully polymerized via atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP). The polymerization was catalyzed by CuBr/PMDETA in chlorobenzene at 90°C with (1-bromoethyl)benzene as the initiator. The polymers have narrow MWD. It is the second example of mesogen-jacketed liquid crystalline polymer (MJLCP...

To address the practical issues of polymer molecular weight determination, the first accurate polymer weight-average molecular weight determination method in diverse living/controlled polymerization via DOSY (diffusion-ordered NMR spectroscopy) is reported. Based on the linear correlation between the logarithm of diffusion coefficient (log D) and the molecular weights (log Mw), external calibra...

Polymer brushes produced by controlled surface-initiated polymerization provide a route to surfaces coated with well-defined thin polymer films that are covalently bound to the substrate. All of the major controlled polymerization techniques have been applied to the synthesis of polymer brushes and examples of each are presented here. Many examples of brush synthesis in the literature have used...

We describe the use of one of the most advanced radical polymerization techniques, the reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) process, to produce highly functional core-shell particles based on a silica core and a shell made of functional polymeric chains with very well controlled structure. The versatility of RAFT polymerization is illustrated by the control of the polymerizat...

Stackable gels comprised of layers of dissimilar polymers were synthesized by combining conventional free radical polymerization (FRP) and atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) using two approaches: (i) polymerization of a pre-gel solution containing a monomer and cross-linker introduced on top of a previously prepared gel, and (ii) simultaneous polymerization of two immiscible pre-gel so...

styrene nanocomposites were synthesized by in-situ atom transfer radical polymerization at 110oc. the variations of monomer conversion and the linearity of semilogarithmic kinetic plot, some signs of living polymerizationand constant radical concentration in the reaction medium, were revealed by gas chromatography technique (gc). according to the gel permeation chromatography (gpc) results, the...

Nitroxide polymer brushes were covalently patterned on flexible conducting substrates via surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization and microcontact printing. As a cathode of organic radical batteries, the nitroxide polymer brushes prevent the nitroxide polymer from dissolving into electrolyte solvents, which improves the cycle-life performance of batteries.

A series of mono-functionalized metallo-porphyrin polystyrenes have been synthesized using atom transfer radical polymerization and their self-assembling behavior was studied by electron microscopy showing that the polystyrene tail-length influences the aggregate architecture.