Blue light-induced iniferter RAFT polymerization in aqueous-alcoholic media as a universal tool for the homopolymerization of various monomer families: kinetic investigations on different scales

Abstract

Photo-iniferter RAFT polymerization offers an opportunity to synthesize polymers without the requirements of external initiators. Blue light-induced iniferter RAFT polymerization was performed in a water–ethanol mixture (50 : 50 w/w) as an environmentally friendly, facile and tunable method to prepare well-defined homopolymers of different monomer classes like poly(N,N-dimethylacrylamide) (PDMA), poly(2-dimethylamino ethylacrylate) (PDMAEA) and poly(vinylpyridines) (PVPs). Homopolymers were synthesized on different laboratory scales between 1 g and 75 g. The influence of light intensity and temperature on polymerizations on different scales was investigated. Polymerization conditions were optimized and narrow molecular weight-distributed PDMA (Đ = 1.08–1.30), PDMAEA (Đ = 1.21–1.42), P4VP (Đ = 1.07–1.31) and P2VP (Đ = 1.14–1.35) were synthesized on larger laboratory scales and in short polymerization times (≤ 6 h). This study highlights the versatile usability and adaptability of visible light-induced RAFT polymerization for larger polymer production in a batch process.