Soft nanotechnology and living polymerization: an indissoluble marriage?

Ivan Keranova, Fabio Di Lenaa, Marc Michela, Valerie Toniazzoa, David Rucha, Stoyan Miloshevb, Todorka Vladkovab
Corresponding author: fabio.dilena@tudor.lu
a

Departement of Advanced Materials and Structures, Public Recherch Center Henri Tudor, 66 rue de Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette L-4002, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg b Department of Polymer Engineering, University of Chemical Technology and Metallurgy, UCTMSofia, Bulgary

The growing demand for nanoscale soft materials with uniform size and controlled functionalities has fostered the development of living polymerization techniques. Among these, reversible-deactivation radical polymerizations (RDRP) such as ATRP and RAFT have received much attention in the last 15 years due to their simplicity and broad applicability. RDRPs, however, require the use of specifically designed catalysts and/or mediators and/or initiators, which should be not only prepared in the lab but also removed from the reaction mixture after the polymerization. This makes RDRP a process often too elaborated and expensive for the large scale production of specialty polymers. In this presentation, it will be shown that the convenient and industrially friendly, conventional radical polymerization can be used for the synthesis of well-defined nanoscale soft materials such as polymer nanocapsules and nanofibers (Figure 1) for a variety of applications.

Figure 1. Electrospun nanofibers of poly(dimethylsiloxane)-b-poly(N-vinyl pyrrolidone) prepared via conventional radical polymerization.