Abstract
A critical review on the synthesis, characterization, and modeling of polymer grafting is presented. Although the motivation stemmed from grafting synthetic polymers onto lignocellulosic biopolymers, a comprehensive overview is also provided on the chemical grafting, characterization, and processing of grafted materials of different types, including synthetic backbones. Although polymer grafting has been studied for many decades—and so has the modeling of polymer branching and crosslinking for that matter, thereby reaching a good level of understanding in order to describe existing branching/crosslinking systems—polymer grafting has remained behind in modeling efforts. Areas of opportunity for further study are suggested within this review.
Highlights
Graft copolymers consist of branches of polymer segments covalently bonded to primary polymer chains
If the polymer molecule is a homopolymer, the reaction route to produce the branches is known as polymer branching; polymer grafting is usually considered as a chemical route to produce materials whose branches are chemically different from the backbone or primary polymer chain
More efficient methods that allow the synthesis of graft copolymers with equidistant and same-length branches, with which the microstructure and composition can be controlled to a remarkable level, have been developed [1]
Summary
Graft copolymers consist of branches of polymer segments covalently bonded to primary polymer chains. If the polymer molecule is a homopolymer, the reaction route to produce the branches is known as polymer branching; polymer grafting is usually considered as a chemical route to produce materials whose branches are chemically different from the backbone or primary polymer chain. More efficient methods that allow the synthesis of graft copolymers with equidistant and same-length branches, with which the microstructure and composition can be controlled to a remarkable level, have been developed [1]. Materials with improved or different polymer properties from mechanical, thermal, melt flow or dilute solution perspectives can be synthesized by polymer grafting [1,3,4,5,6,7]. The structure–properties relationship has been an important issue in the analysis of polymer grafting [1]
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