Macromolecular Engineering by Applying Concurrent Reactions with ATRP

Modern polymeric material design often involves precise tailoring of molecular/supramolecular structures which is also called macromolecular engineering. The available tools for molecular structure tailoring are controlled/living polymerization methods, click chemistry, supramolecular polymerization, self-assembly, among others. When polymeric materials with complex molecular architectures are targeted, it usually takes several steps of reactions to obtain the aimed product. Concurrent polymerization methods, i.e., two or more reaction mechanisms, steps, or procedures take place simultaneously instead of sequentially, can significantly reduce the complexity of the reaction procedure or provide special molecular architectures that would be otherwise very difficult to synthesize. Atom transfer radical polymerization, ATRP, has been widely applied in concurrent polymerization reactions and resulted in improved efficiency in macromolecular engineering. This perspective summarizes reported studies employing concurrent polymerization methods with ATRP as one of the reaction components and highlights future research directions in this area.