In the conventional free radical copolymerization of styrene
with VBSC, branched polystyrenes were prepared successfully.
During the polymerization, VBSC played the role
of branching agent. It could not only copolymerize but also
acted as chain transfer agent. GPC traces demonstrated that
the number-average molecular weight increased along with
monomer conversion and the resulting polymers had broad
molecular weight distributions with multi-peaks. The structure
of the branched polymer was characterized by 1H
NMR. It demonstrated that the branched polystyrene could
be synthesized with controlled architecture by tuning the
VBSC molar ratio in the feed. Compared with other method,
this strategy is facile and of low cost. The further work is
focused on using this novel chain transfer monomer to synthesize
hyper-branched polymer and complex structure
polymer.