Free radical controlled polymerization of fluorinated copolymers produced in microemulsion

Controlled free-radical polymerization is an emerging technique which can in principle produce macromolecules with well defined microstructure, possibly tailored to specific applications. This work describes the application of such a process to the production of several hundreds of tons of a fluorinated copolymer per year. The aim is to control the microstructure of the product and, in particular, to produce branched macromolecules with relatively uniform chain lengths. The process operates in microemulsion and is complicated by the presence of branching reactions. A complete kinetic model is developed to identify the most appropriate operating conditions to produce copolymers with desired characteristics.