Recent collaborative work from the group broadening the scope of SET-LRP has been published in Biomacromolecules. The new paper details the polymerization of menthyl acrylate, a monomer derived from biobased and renewable menthol. This monomer’s hydrophobicity, which might be expected to be problematic for SET-LRP, instead causes the reaction to self-generate a biphasic system, in which SET-LRP proceeds cleanly.

This work was led by the group of Gerard Lligadas at University Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain.