Studies of Radical Alternating Copolymerization. III. Kinetics of the Copolymerization of Citraconic Anhydride and Vinyl Acetate: A New Method of Evaluating the Kinetics Constant

Abstract

We show that the copolymerization of citraconic anhydride and vinyl acetate is an alternating one. The two monomers form a charge transfer complex, and we propose a new strategy to determine the value of the velocity constants β₁ = K_AC/K_AD and β₂ = K_DC/K_DA involving the acceptor A, the donor D, and their charge transfer complex C. We obtained β₁ = 9.9 and β₂ = 3.6. The complex exhibits a greater reactivity than the monomer in the propagation reactions.