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Volume 6 Issue 3, March 2014

Copolymers of ethylene and other monomers bearing polar functional groups are typically produced using harsh conditions that make any fine structural control of the resulting material quite difficult. Now, Christophe Detrembleur and co-workers have shown that an organo-cobalt complex can be used to mediate the radical copolymerization of ethylene with polar monomers such as vinyl acetate or acrylonitrile under mild conditions. This approach affords a measure of control over the monomer composition of the final product as well as the distribution of the different monomers in the polymer chain, as shown schematically on the cover.Article p179IMAGE: CHRISTOPHE LEPOTCOVER DESIGN: ALEX WING

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Article

  • Copolymers of ethylene and polar monomers are produced industrially using free radical polymerization that leads to broad molecular weight distributions of products with ill-defined structures. Now, an organo–cobalt complex is shown to control the radical copolymerization of ethylene with polar monomers under mild experimental conditions, and allows access to block-like copolymers with targeted compositions and monomer distributions.

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