Designed Monomers and Polymers (Jan 2019)

Synthesis of PAN with adjustable molecular weight and low polydispersity index (PDI) value via reverse atom transfer radical polymerization

  • Shuang Li,
  • Yazhen Wang,
  • Liqun Ma,
  • Xueze Zhang,
  • Shaobo Dong,
  • Li Liu,
  • Xilai Zhou,
  • Chenglong Wang,
  • Zhen Shi

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/15685551.2019.1678557
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 22, no. 1
pp. 180 – 186

Abstract

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The reverse atom transfer radical polymerization (RATRP) of acrylonitrile (AN) was carried out in N, N-dimethylformamide (DMF) with AIBN as initiator, FeCl3•6H2O/triphenylphosphine (PPh3) and FeCl3•6H2O/pentamethyldle-thylenetrlamlne (PMDETA) as catalytic systems, respectively. Effect of reaction time and initiator concentration on polymerization rate, molecular weight and molecular weight distribution were investigated in detail. The Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FTIR) and 1H nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1HNMR) were employed to analyze the chain end of the PAN. Gel permeation chromatography (GPC) was applied to measure the molecular weight and polydispersity index (PDI) of PAN. The polymerization demonstrated a typical pseudo first-order kinetics characteristics as evidenced by the number-average molecular weights (Mn) increasing linearly with monomer conversion; the Mn decreasing with the increasing of the initiator concentration. Meanwhile, the low PDI value (<1.2) indicated the controllability of polymerization.

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