A series of carboxylic acid-based alkoxyamines associated with SnBr₄, a Lewis acid, have been used as protonic acids of a binary initiating system to control the cationic polymerization of vinyl ether.

A series of water-soluble styrene and propyl (meth)acrylate based monomers bearing a sulfonyl(trifluoromethane sulfonyl) imide (STFSI) group was prepared. These monomers were synthesized in good yield from the corresponding chloride sulfonyl monomer and trifluoromethanesulfonamide. Their chemical structures were further confirmed by HR-MS and NMR spectroscopy. Nitroxide-mediated polymerization of the prepared monomers was then performed in aqueous solution at 100 °C, 90 °C and 75 °C for acrylate, styrene and methacrylate derivatives, respectively. Controlled polymerization was successfully achieved as illustrated by the linearity of ln([M]₀/[M]) vs. t^2/3, the molar mass increase with conversion and the relatively low dispersity values for the resulting homopolymers. Compared to their neutral analogous polymers, the prepared anionic homopolymers exhibited a higher glass-transition temperature. This phenomenon was attributed to the electrostatic interactions between STFSI side groups along the polymer backbone.

This work reports the conformal coating of poly(poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate) (P(MePEGMA)) polymer electrolyte on highly organized titania nanotubes (TiO₂nts) fabricated by electrochemical anodization of Ti foil. The conformal coating was achieved by electropolymerization using cyclic voltammetry technique. The characterization of the polymer electrolyte by proton nuclear magnetic resonance (¹H NMR) and size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) shows the formation of short polymer chains, mainly trimers. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) results confirm the presence of the polymer and LiTFSI salt. The galvanostatic tests at 1C show that the performance of the half cell against metallic Li foil is improved by 33% when TiO₂nts are conformally coated with the polymer electrolyte.