Research (Jan 2018)

Self-Stabilized Precipitation Polymerization and Its Application

  • Zhenjie Liu,
  • Dong Chen,
  • Jinfang Zhang,
  • Haodong Liao,
  • Yanzhao Chen,
  • Yingfa Sun,
  • Jianyuan Deng,
  • Wantai Yang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/9370490
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2018

Abstract

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An effective, value-added use of the large amounts of olefinic compounds produced in the processing of petroleum, aside from ethylene and propylene, has been a long outstanding challenge. Here, we developed a novel heterogeneous polymerization method, beyond emulsion/dispersion/suspension, termed self-stabilized precipitation (2SP) polymerization, which involves the nucleation and growth of nanoparticles (NPs) of a well-defined size without the use of any stabilizers and multifunctional monomers (crosslinker). This technique leads to two revolutionary advances: (1) the generation of functional copolymer particles from single olefinic monomer or complex olefinic mixtures (including C4/C5/C9 fractions) in large quantities, which open a new way to transform huge amount of unused olefinic compounds in C4/C5/C9 fractions into valuable copolymers, and (2) the resultant polymeric NPs possess a self-limiting size and narrow size distribution, therefore being one of the most simple, efficient, and green strategies to produce uniform, size-tunable, and functional polymeric nanoparticles. More importantly, the separation of the NPs from the reaction medium is simple and the supernatant liquid can be reused; hence this new synthetic strategy has great potential for industrial production.