A personal journey on using polymerization in aqueous dispersed media to synthesize polymers with branched structures

This short review is dedicated to celebrate Prof. Shoukuan Fu's 80^th birthday by discussing several of my accomplished projects over the past twenty years, which all applied radical polymerization in aqueous dispersed media for producing polymers with branched structures. These projects include the use of microemulsion polymerization for syntheses of fluorescent nanoparticles, hairy nanoparticles and hyperbranched polymers; the use of miniemulsion polymerization for synthesis of star polymers and light-emitting nanoparticles; the use of seeded emulsion polymerization for synthesis of hairy nanoparticles and hyperstar polymers; and the use of precipitation polymerization for synthesis of hollow polymer nanocapsules. Discussion of these projects demonstrates intriguing features of polymerization in biphasic dispersed media via either conventional radical polymerization or controlled radical polymerization to effectively regulate the branched structure of functional polymers.