Analytical and advanced kinetic models for characterization of chain-growth copolymerization: the state-of-the-art

Abstract

A detailed overview is given on the currently developed analytical and advanced kinetic models to calculate the main bulk/solution chain-growth copolymerization characteristics. A differentiation is made between the calculation of the average propagation rate coefficient/polymerization rate and compositional properties, e.g. (average) copolymer composition, segment length distribution, and monomer sequences. Both terminal and penultimate reactivity models are included and the relevance of their parameters is highlighted through case studies. Focus is first on models describing average characteristics, with particular emphasis on the strength of analytical models to determine reactivity ratios. Next more advanced models, in particular multivariate kinetic models accounting for distributions of a distinct number of microstructural variates of interest such as chain length and copolymer composition, are discussed. Finally, the more recently developed explicit or reaction event tracking models are covered, in which compositional and temporal changes are fully tracked along individual copolymer chains.