Free radical initiation mechanisms in copolymerisation studied by the nitroxide trapping technique

The initiation mechanism for the radical copolymerization of vinyl acetate with acrylonitrile initiated by t-butoxy radical was investigated using 1,1,3,3-tetramethyl-1,3-dihydroisoindol-2-yoloxyl as a radical trapping agent. Two adducts (diastereoisomers) containing both vinyl acetate and acrylonitrile monomers were isolated. From a kinetic analysis of these and other products over a wide range of conditions, a mechanism involving separate monomer addition, which may be regarded as normal kinetic control of monomer addition, is shown to be most consistent with the observed results