ALKANES AS INITIATORS FOR THE FREE-RADICAL POLYMERIZATION

Alkanes with highly substitued carbon-carbon bonds can be cleaved in free radicals by homolytic dissociation under the influence of thermal energy. The energy of dissociation is mainly determined by the type and size of the respective substituents. For tetraarylbutane dinitriles the temperatures of decomposition are in the range of other technically used initiators. But nevertheless, these compounds are up to now rather seldom used to initiate free radical polymerizations. This is connected with the special mechanism of initiation: the formed highly substituted alkyl radicals are relatively stable and show only a rather low reactivity against the usually used monomers. Therefore, in the beginning of the polymerization the radical concentration is rather high which leads not only to addition to monomers but also to a pronounced primary radical termination. In some cases this termination process is reversible which results in an unusual polymerization kinetics. Depending on the type of monomer and the degree of reversibility of the primary radical termination, either a period of ''dead-end'' polymerization follows or the cleavage of the oligomers at the chain end results in a re-initiation process with a ''normal'' polymerization with increased rate. The reaction mechanism, kinetics and some possible applications of such initiating alkanes are reported.