Reis Marcus H, Leibfarth Frank A, Pitet Louis M
Department of Chemistry, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, United States.
Advanced Polymer Functionalization Group, Institute for Materials Research (IMO), Hasselt University, Martelarenlaan 42, 3500 Hasselt, Belgium.
ACS Macro Lett. 2020 Jan 21;9(1):123-133. doi: 10.1021/acsmacrolett.9b00933. Epub 2020 Jan 8.
The number of reports using continuous flow technology in tubular reactors to perform precision polymerizations has grown enormously in recent years. Flow polymerizations allow highly efficient preparation of polymers exhibiting well-defined molecular characteristics, and has been applied to a slew of monomers and various polymerization mechanisms, including anionic, cationic, radical, and ring-opening. Polymerization conducted in continuous flow offers several distinct advantages, including improved efficiency, reproducibility, and enhanced safety for exothermic polymerizations using highly toxic components, high pressures, and high temperatures. The further development of this technology is thus of relevance for many industrial polymerization processes. While much progress has been demonstrated in recent years, opportunities remain for increasing the compositional and architectural complexity of polymeric materials synthesized in a continuous fashion. Extending the reactor processing principles that have heretofore been focused on optimizing homopolymerization to include multisegment block copolymers, particularly from monomers that propagate via incompatible mechanisms, represents a major challenge and coveted target for continuous flow polymerization. Likewise, the spatial and temporal control of reactivity afforded by flow chemistry has and will continue to enable the production of complex polymeric architectures. This Viewpoint offers a brief background of continuous flow polymerization focused primarily on tubular (micro)reactors and includes selected examples that are relevant to these specific developments.
近年来，使用管式反应器中的连续流动技术进行精密聚合反应的报道数量大幅增加。流动聚合能够高效制备具有明确分子特性的聚合物，并且已应用于多种单体和各种聚合机理，包括阴离子聚合、阳离子聚合、自由基聚合和开环聚合。连续流动聚合具有几个明显的优势，包括提高效率、重现性，以及对于使用剧毒成分、高压和高温的放热聚合反应而言，安全性得到增强。因此，这项技术的进一步发展与许多工业聚合过程相关。尽管近年来已取得很大进展，但在以连续方式合成的聚合物材料中，增加其组成和结构复杂性仍存在机会。将迄今专注于优化均聚反应的反应器加工原理扩展到包括多嵌段共聚物，特别是由通过不相容机理进行增长的单体合成的多嵌段共聚物，是连续流动聚合的一项重大挑战和令人垂涎的目标。同样，流动化学所提供的反应性的空间和时间控制已经并将继续使复杂聚合物结构的生产成为可能。本观点文章简要介绍了主要聚焦于管式（微）反应器的连续流动聚合的背景，并包括与这些特定发展相关的选定实例。
