Anionic Polymerization: Principles, Practice, Strength, Consequences and Applications

This book presents these important facts: a) The mechanism of anionic polymerization, a more than 50-year challenge in polymer chemistry, has now become better understood; b) Precise synthesis of many polymers with novel architectures (triblock, multi-block, graft, exact graft, comb, cyclic, many armed stars with multi-components, dendrimer-like hyper-branched, and their structural mixed (co)polymers, etc.) have been advanced significantly; c) Based on such polymers, new morphological and self-organizing nano-objects and supra molecular assemblies have been created and widely studied and are considered nanodevices in the fields of nano science and technology; d) New high-tech and industrial applications for polymeric materials synthesized by anionic polymerization have been proposed. These remarkable developments have taken place in the last 15 years. Anionic polymerization continues to be the only truly living polymerization system (100 % termination free under appropriate conditions) and consequently the only one with unique capabilities in the synthesis of well-defined (i.e., precisely controlled molecular weight, nearly mono-disperse molecular weight distribution, structural and compositional homogeneity) complex macromolecular architectures. This book, with contributions from the world’s leading specialists, will be useful for all researchers, including students, working in universities, in research organizations, and in industry.

Professor Nikos Hadjichristidis
Professor of Chemical Sciences
Division of Chemical and Life Sciences & Engineering
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Chemistry of Thermoplastic Elastomers Award of ACS, Rubber Division, USA, 2011
Cooperative Award of ACS Division of Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering, USA, 2010
International Award of the Society of Polymer Science, Japan, 2007
Akira HIRAO, Ph.D.
Professor of Organic and Polymeric Materials
Tokyo Institute of Technology
Japan
Japan Polymer Society Award (2010)
member of the Editorial Board of Macromolecules, Polymer Journal "