Abstract
The importance of functional and high-performance polymer materials has increased along with technology innovation of electronic appliances, automobiles, satellites and space probes, household appliances, information devices and so on. Especially, an interest in highly transparent heat-resistant polymeric materials has greatly increased in recent years. The molecular weight, molecular weight distribution, end-group structures, and sequence structures of polymers can be precisely controlled by living radical polymerization and the product polymers with well-controlled structures are used for the design of high-performance polymer materials. In this comprehensive article, we summarize the results of our research works on the design of transparent and heat-resistant polymer materials using acrylic block copolymers which were synthesized by living radical polymerization methods. We describe the precise control of the structures of polyacrylates containing adamantyl groups, the structure and physical properties of polyacrylate block copolymers containing high glass transition temperature segments, the control of the structure of rigid polyfumarates by living radical polymerization, a reaction control for the polymerization of diisopropyl fumarate by reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer polymerization using dithiobenzoates and trithiocarbonates as the chain transfer agents, and the synthesis and characterization of block copolymers including rigid polyfumarate segments.
