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Heteroatom-functionalized polyolefins are of fundamental interest and practical importance. This has spurred investigations of the copolymerization of polar and nonpolar olefins. We report the first syndiospecific polymerization of a series of heteroatom-containing α-olefins and their copolymerization with ethylene catalyzed by half-sandwich rare-earth complexes. We have found that the interact...

Copolymerization is an important synthetic tool to prepare polymers with desirable combination of properties which are difficult to achieve from the different homopolymers concerned. This investigation reports the copolymerization of 2-ethylhexyl acrylate (EHA) and styrene using copper bromide (CuBr) as catalyst in combination with N,N,N',N″,N″- pentamethyldiethylenetriamine (PMDETA) as ligand ...

This contribution presents an updated overview of the different copolymers containing stereoregular polystyrene blocks. Special emphasis is placed on syndiospecific and isospecific copolymerization of styrene with co-monomers (ethylene and α-olefins, conjugated and non-conjugated dienes, styrene derivatives, etc.). The catalytic systems involved are described and the polymerization mechanisms a...

We study statistical copolymerization effects on the upper critical solution temperature (CST) of generic homopolymers by means of coarse-grained Langevin dynamics computer simulations and mean-field theory. Our systematic investigation reveals that the CST can change monotonically or non-monotonically with copolymerization, as observed in experimental studies, depending on the degree of non-ad...

The radical copolymerization of vinylidene fluoride (VDF) with 4-bromo-1,1,2-trifluorobut-

We analyze a simple model for the copolymerization of two chemically distinct monomers that displays a wide variety of product sequence compositions depending on the rate coefficients for the stepwise addition of each monomer to a growing polymer chain. We show that in certain regions of parameter space the copolymer sequence composition depends sensitively on these parameter values, and we com...

The free radical dispersion polymerization of styrene (St) and methyl methacrylate (MMA) initiated by poly(oxyethylene) (PEO) macroazoinimer (MIM-400) in water/ethanol, was investigated at three different temperatures (50, 60 and 80 8C) for seven polymerization times (3, 6, 9, 12, 24, 36 and 48 h). PStPEO and PMMA-PEO networks were obtained. In each case, polymer gel fractions depend on the pol...

The mechanical relaxation behavior and microstructure of a series of novel norbornylPOSS organic-inorganic copolymers have been investigated. We have examined the influence on physical properties of both the weight fraction of POSS-norbornyl monomer and the corner group composition. POSS refers to the polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane inorganic/organic macromer, which is composed of an inorg...