Oxygen-tolerant and recyclable graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) catalyzed photo-induced electron/energy transfer reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer polymerization (PET-RAFT) without any additives

The existing photo-induced electron/energy transfer reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer polymerization (PET-RAFT) systems using g-C3N4 as catalyst are complicated and often require modification of g-C3N4 or additives as co-catalyst. Herein, we propose an economical g-C3N4 catalyzed PET-RAFT polymerization without any additives. The good catalytic ability of g-C3N4 is attributed to the fact that the thermal exfoliation by secondary calcination increases the specific surface area and thus exposes more photocatalytic active sites. The g-C3N4 catalyzed PET-RAFT polymerizations of methyl methacrylate were successfully carried out under blue LEDs. The faster polymerization rates without prior deoxygenation showed good oxygen-tolerant. The g-C3N4 can be easily recovered after polymerization and cycled at least seven times with little loss of catalytic performance.