Kinetics Study on Hyperbranched Thermoplastic Elastomer from Soybean Oil Via RAFT

In this contribution we show how hyberbranching and gelation may be controlled in the Reversible Addition-Fragmentation Chain Transfer (RAFT) polymerization of multifunctional acrylated epoxidized soybean oil (AESO). Under certain conditions, RAFT, a type of controlled radical polymerization delays the onset of gelation to high conversion, enabling the production of biobased thermoplastic elastomers. We have explored a number of factors that influence gelation, e.g. number of functionality per monomer, monomer concentration, initiator concentration, etc...  Kinetic data, as well as light scattering data will be provided, which show how and why RAFT delays gelation. Dynamic shear rheology of polymer with different degree of branching s will also be discussed, which shows how chain architecture affects the growth of hyperbranched system and the viscoelasticity of the final product.