New Generation of Thermoplastic Elastomers from Narrowly Dispersed All-(Meth)acrylic ABA Triblock Copolymers Made by RAFT

Symmetrical trithiocarbonate (TTC) bis(2-cyanopropan-2-yl)trithiocarbonate (TTC-bCP) was investigated in reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer polymerization for the synthesis of a library of well-defined all-meth(acrylic) ABA triblock copolymers with thermoplastic elastomeric properties. In addition to standard monomers such as methyl methacrylate (MMA) and n-butyl acrylate, biobased monomers such as isobornyl methacrylate (iBoMA) and tetrahydrofurfuryl acrylate were used. High molar masses (>100 kg mol–1) with low dispersities (<1.10) were achieved, and variation of the hard block composition between MMA and iBoMA allowed to tune the service temperature between 120 and 180 °C. The obtained materials have been shown to exhibit invariant storage modulus (G′) in the MPa range after 5 cycles of recycling at 180 °C for 30 min