Reversible-Deactivation Radical Polymerisation: chain polymerisation made simple

Abstract

Reversible-Deactivation Radical Polymerisation (RDRP) is one of the most exciting developments in chemistry over the past few decades, but it is rarely mentioned when polymerisation mechanisms are introduced in the final years of secondary education or first years of tertiary education. We propose that this is unfortunate, as RDRP is simpler than conventional Radical Polymerisation both conceptually and in terms of setting quantitative problems, and that it illustrates several other important features of chemistry as a human endeavour: How essential mechanistic unities are hidden by the details of how we write a chemical reaction, how a ‘bug’ in one stage of development of a process can become a ‘feature’ in a later stage, and how exciting changes can occur quite suddenly in fields thought to be mature and uninteresting.

Keywords

• chain reaction
• history of science
• mechanism
• polymerisation
• reversible-deactivation radical polymerisation