Water-assisted atom transfer radical polymerization of N-isopropylacrylamide: nature of solvent and temperature.

We demonstrate here via the atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) of N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPAM) at low temperature that the negative function of water in aqueous ATRP is significantly suppressed. By the addition of a small amount of water in a water-miscible organic solvent and maintaining low polymerization temperature, the ATRP of NIPAM is relatively fast and well controlled. We observed that the rate of the polymerization in pure organic solvent at a monomer concentration of 20 wt % is slow, and relatively low conversions were obtained. The low conversion of PNIPAM in pure alcoholic media (such as methanol, ethanol, and n-propanol) is attributed to the poor solubility of the resulting low molecular weight polymer in such solvents. The consequence is that the PNIPAM chains are aggregated, resulting in the inaccessibility of the embedded halide atom of the polymer chain ends by the copper catalyst. As expected, the ATRP of NIPAM in pure water was found to be fast and uncontrolled. These results have therefore prompted us to study the ATRP of NIPAM in aqueous-organic mixtures. Room temperature polymerization of NIPAM in mixed aqueous-organic solvent mixtures (organic:water = 4:1 or 3:1) revealed to be fast and uncontrolled. However, when the NIPAM polymerization was conducted at low temperature (0 degrees C) in such solvent systems, the polymerization turned out to be well-controlled as the molar masses progress linearly with conversion, and pseudo-first-order kinetic plots were obtained. Furthermore, monomodal GPC traces and narrow molecular weight distributions were obtained in all aqueous-organic solvent systems. Chain extension for aqueous ATRP of NIPAM revealed to proceed well at low temperature as compared to room temperature. Furthermore, we observe that the rates of the polymerization of NIPAM in different aqueous-organic mixtures follow the trend of polarity in the case of the polar aprotic solvents. However, in the case of polar protic solvent (such as methanol, ethanol, 1-propanol, and 2-propanol), the rate of the polymerization was found to increase with increasing solubility of the PNIPAM from methanol to 2-propanol.