Trithiocarbonates as intrinsic photoredox catalysts and RAFT agents for oxygen tolerant controlled radical polymerization

This study reports the discovery that trithiocarbonate RAFT agents can significantly reduce the amount of dissolved oxygen when irradiated with visible light (λ_max ≈ 460 nm) in the presence of a sacrificial tertiary amine. By taking advantage of this effect, we conducted a series of photo-CRPs of acrylates without the requirement of pre-degassing the reaction mixtures. In these systems, the trithiocarbonate plays a triple role of photocatalyst for oxygen removal, initiator, and RAFT agent for polymerization control. We believe this robust and facile synthetic method will be beneficial for cost-effective industrial applications as well as the laboratory-scale synthesis of functional polymeric materials.