Polymer Nanofibers Exhibiting Remarkable Activity in Driving the Living Polymerization under Visible Light and Reusability

Lei Xia; Bo-Fei Cheng; Tian-You Zeng; Xuan Nie; Guang Chen; Ze Zhang; Wen-Jian Zhang; Chun-Yan Hong; Ye-Zi You

doi:10.1002/advs.201902451

Polymer Nanofibers Exhibiting Remarkable Activity in Driving the Living Polymerization under Visible Light and Reusability

Adv Sci (Weinh). 2020 Jan 27;7(6):1902451. doi: 10.1002/advs.201902451. eCollection 2020 Mar.

Authors

Lei Xia¹, Bo-Fei Cheng¹, Tian-You Zeng¹, Xuan Nie¹, Guang Chen¹, Ze Zhang¹, Wen-Jian Zhang¹, Chun-Yan Hong¹, Ye-Zi You¹

Affiliation

¹ Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry Department of Polymer Science and Engineering University of Science and Technology of China Hefei 230026 P. R. China.

Abstract

Visible light-driving syntheses have emerged as a powerful tool for organic synthesis and for the preparation of macromolecules under mild and environmentally benign conditions. However, precious but nonreusable photosensitizers or photocatalysts are often required to activate the reaction, limiting its practicality. Here, it is reported that poly(1,4-diphenylbutadiyne) (PDPB) nanofibers exhibit remarkable activity in driving the living free radical polymerization under visible light. Moreover, PDPB nanofibers are very stable under irradiation of visible light and can be reused without appreciable loss of activity even after repeated cycling. The nanofiber will be a promising photocatalyst with excellent reusability and stability for the reactions driven by visible light.

Keywords: nanofibers; photocatalysis; photoinduced electron transfer‐reversible addition‐fragmentation chain transfer (PET‐RAFT); reusability; visible light.