Buback, M.; Junkers, T.; Vana, P.
Laser single pulse initiated RAFT polymerization for assessing chain-length dependent radical termination kinetics
Macromolecular Rapid Communications 2005, 26, 796-802.
 

A novel method combining RAFT polymerization with pulsed-laser initiation for determining chain-length dependent termination rate coefficients, k_t, is presented. Degenerative chain-transfer in RAFT enables single-pulse pulsed-laser polymerization (SP-PLP) traces to be measured on systems with a narrow radical distribution that remains essentially unchanged during the experiment. SP-PLP-RAFT experiments at different polymerization times allow for determining k_t as a function of chain length via classical kinetics assuming chain-length independent k_t.