| Institution: | 1. DWI-Leibniz Institute for Interactive Materials e.V., Forckenbeckstraße 50, 52074 Aachen, Germany;2. Institute of Organic Chemistry, RWTH Aachen University, Landoltweg 1, 52074 Aachen, Germany
These authors contributed equally to this work.;3. Institute of Organic Chemistry, RWTH Aachen University, Landoltweg 1, 52074 Aachen, Germany |
| Abstract: | Mechanochemical approaches are widely used for the efficient, solvent-free synthesis of organic molecules, however their applicability to the synthesis of functional polymers has remained underexplored. Herein, we demonstrate for the first time that mechanochemically triggered free-radical polymerization allows solvent- and initiator-free syntheses of structurally and morphologically well-defined complex functional macromolecular architectures, namely stimuliresponsive microgels. The developed mechanochemical polymerization approach is applicable to a variety of monomers and allows synthesizing microgels with tunable chemical structure, variable size, controlled number of crosslinks and reactive functional end-groups. |
