Polymer Chemistry Dispersity Control in Atom Transfer Radical Polymerizations through Addition of Phenyl Hydrazine Journal: Polymer Chemistry Manuscript ID PY-ART-01-2018-000033.R1 Article Type: Paper Date Submitted by the Author: 04-May-2018 Complete List of Authors: Yadav, Vivek; University of Houston Hashmi, Nairah; University of Houston Ding, Wenyue; University of Houston Li, Tzu-Han; University of Houston Mahanthappa, Mahesh; University of Minnesota, Department of Chemical Engineering & Materials Science; University of Wisconsin–Madison, Department of Chemistry Conrad, Jacinta; University of Houston, Robertson, Megan; University of Houston, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Page 1 of 32 Polymer Chemistry Dispersity Control in Atom Transfer Radical Polymerizations through Addition of Phenyl Hydrazine Vivek Yadav,a Nairah Hashmi,a Wenyue Ding,a Tzu-Han Li,c Mahesh K. Mahanthappa,d Jacinta C. Conrad,*a and Megan L. Robertson*a,b a Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204-4004 b Department of Chemistry University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204-4004 c Materials Engineering Program University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204-4004d Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 *Email:
[email protected],
[email protected] †Electronic Supplementary Information available online. 1 Polymer Chemistry Page 2 of 32 Abstract Molar mass dispersity in polymers affects a wide range of important material properties, yet there are few synthetic methods that systematically generate unimodal distributions with specifically tailored dispersities. Here, we describe a general method for tuning the dispersity of polymers synthesized via atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP). Addition of varying amounts of phenyl hydrazine (PH) to the ATRP of tert-butyl acrylate led to significant deviations in the reaction kinetics, yielding poly(tert-butyl acrylate) with dispersities Đ = 1.08 – 1.80.