Metal-catalyzed Living Radical Graft Copolymerization of Styrene Initiated from Arylated Poly(vinyl chloride)

PVC is one of the world’s major polymers and a large amount of PVC is produced worldwide for its superior mechanical and physical properties. Graft copolymer-ization of PVC with monomers such as styrene has been examined to improve the thermal stability of PVC. This graft copolymerization was carried out by atom trans-fer radical polymerization (ATRP). In this method PVC was condensed with toluene in mild condition (toluene as arylating agent, AlCl3 complexed with nitrobenzene as cat- alyst and THF as diluent) and we used arylated PVC (PVC-ph) as a starting polymer and N-bromosuccinimide as a brominating agent to obtain polymers with bromine group. This brominated PVC was used as a macroinitiator. This macroinitiator can polymerize styrene in the presence of CuCl/bpy catalyst system in THF solvent at 90°C. The formation of the graft copolymer was confirmed with GPC, DSC, 1H NMR and FTIR spectroscopy. This approach using a macroinitiator is an effective method for the preparation of new materials.