Tailoring Polymer Dispersity by RAFT Polymerization:A Versatile Approach

Reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization has been widely utilized to produce low-dispersity (co)polymers by employing a single high-activity RAFT agent. Anastasaki and co-workers reported RAFT polymerization by mixing one high-activity and one low-activity RAFT agent to tune the dispersity for a wide range of polymer classes. In all cases, monomodal molecular weight distributions were obtained, and this method was further applied to the preparation of block co-polymers, where successful chain extension was observed, independent of initial dispersity.