Synthesis of high molecular weight and narrow molecular weight distribution poly(acrylonitrile) via RAFT polymerization |
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| Authors: | Shaogan Niu Lifen Zhang Jian Zhu Wei Zhang Zhenping Cheng Xiulin Zhu |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Advanced Functional Polymer Design and Application, College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, China;2. Email:zhanglifen@suda.edu.cn, chengzhenping@suda.edu.cn, xlzhu@suda.edu.cn |
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| Abstract: | Well‐defined polyacrylonitrile (PAN) of high viscosity‐average molecular weight (Mη = 405,100 g/mol) was successfully synthesized using reversible addition‐fragmentation chain transfer polymerization. The polymerization exhibits controlled characters: molecular weights of the resultant PANs increasing approximately linearly with monomer conversion and keeping narrow molecular weight distributions. The addition of 0.01 equiv (relative to monomer acrylonitrile) of Lewis acid AlCl3 in the polymerization system afforded the obtained PAN with an improved isotacticity (by 8%). In addition, the influence of molecular weights and molecular weight distributions of PANs on the morphology of the electrospun fibers was investigated. The results showed that, under the same conditions of electrospinning, average diameter (247–1094 nm) of fibers increased with molecular weights of PANs, and it was much easier to get “uniform” diameter fibers while using PANs with narrow molecular weight distributions as the precursor of electrospinning. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem, 2013 |
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| Keywords: | acrylonitrile electrospinning kinetics (polym.) living radical polymerization radical polymerization reversible addition‐fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) |
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