Determination of Propagation Rate Coefficient for the Polymerization of N-Vinylpyrrolidone in Aqueous Solution by Pulsed Electron Polymerization and Size Exclusion Chromatography

ACS Macro Lett. 2014 Jul 15;3(7):639-642. doi: 10.1021/mz500294c. Epub 2014 Jun 16.

Abstract

A new method for determination of a propagation rate coefficient in radical polymerization, pulsed electron polymerization-size exclusion chromatography (PEP-SEC), has been tested on N-vinylpyrrolidone in water and shown to yield results very similar to those obtained by the well-established pulsed laser polymerization-size exclusion chromatography (PLP-SEC). A potential advantage of PEP-SEC is its applicability to studying polymerizations in nontransparent systems and lack of any additives. Series of nanosecond pulses of high-energy electrons from an accelerator generate radicals which initiate polymerization. Further analysis of the samples and data processing are the same as in PLP-SEC. The described technique can be potentially developed into a method complementary and/or comparative to PLP-SEC.