It was demonstrated that the fast RAFT polymerization of styrene with almost perfect polymerization performance could be achieved by using a carefully designed miniemulsion polymerization system.With much higher levels of surfactant (9 wt% based on monomer) and co-stabilizer (5 wt% based on monomer) than those in typical miniemulsion polymerization,the miniemulsion polymerization using 1-phenylethyl phenyl-dithioacetate as a RAFT agent showed a very fast polymerization rate,excellent performance of living radical polymerization during the entire polymerization process,and narrow particle size distributions.It was concluded that RAFT miniemulsion polymerization presented an excellent commercial process for a living radical polymerization system.
