Smart Inhibitors

Chemical anchoring is currently used in industry due to its versatility, efficiency and convenience. However, it suffers severe drawbacks concerning its sustainability, safety concerns, and narrow range of conditions for its utilization. Empiric strategies are currently used to find solutions for these issues rising dramatic concerns on possible safety and reliability. The corresponding polymerisation procedures are highly temperature dependent limiting their scope. Thus, a promising systematic way to control the radical polymerization of monomers the chemistry on which chemical anchoring is grounded would be to use inhibitors, which slow down the polymerization rate even under extreme conditions. To achieve this aim, we plan to use alkoxyamines as smart inhibitors. They are able to decompose in a controlled way yielding radical species, which scavenge propagating radicals via a cross-coupling reaction. It is our aim to develop molecular devices controlling polymerization by synthesizing and systematically quantifying the reactivity of alkoxylamines.