Reconstruction of the Chain Length Distribution for Vinyl‐Divinyl Copolymerization Using the Numerical Fractionation Technique

A proposed theory for evaluating the chain length distribution (CLD) using the numerical fractionation (NF) technique was extended to the vinyl‐divinyl (VDV) copolymerization. The CLD is reconstructed for this system, in which pendant double bond propagation leads to crosslinking and gel formation. The method was earlier developed for a non‐linear free‐radical polymerization scheme where chain transfer to polymer and termination by combination resulted in gel formation. The VDV study presented indicates that the proposed method of weighted summation (WS) accurately predicts the resulting CLDs evaluated using NF.

Comparison of the overall polymer NF and the direct solution CLDs near the gel point.