Self-Stabilized Precipitation Polymerization and Its Application

An efective,value-added use of the large amounts of olefnic compounds produced in the processing of petroleum,aside from ethylene and propylene,has been a long outstanding challenge.Here,we developed a novel heterogeneous polymerization method,beyond emulsion/dispersion/suspension,termed self-stabilized precipitation(2SP)polymerization,which involves the nucleation and growth of nanoparticles(NPs)of a well-defned size without the use of any stabilizers and multifunctional monomers(crosslinker).Tis technique leads to two revolutionary advances:(1)the generation of functional copolymer particles from single olefnic monomer or complex olefnic mixtures(including C4/C5/C9 fractions)in large quantities,which open a new way to transform huge amount of unused olefnic compounds in C4/C5/C9 fractions into valuable copolymers,and(2)the resultant polymeric NPs possess a self-limiting size and narrow size distribution,therefore being one of the most simple,efcient,and green strategies to produce uniform,size-tunable,and functional polymeric nanoparticles.More importantly,the separation of the NPs from the reaction medium is simple and the supernatant liquid can be reused;hence this new synthetic strategy has great potential for industrial production.