A Self-Reporting Photocatalyst for Online Fluorescence Monitoring of High Throughput RAFT Polymerization

Translating controlled/living radical polymerization (CLRP) from batch to the high throughput production of polymer libraries presents several challenges in terms of both polymer synthesis and characterization. Although recently there have been significant advances in the field of low volume, high throughput CLRP, techniques able to simultaneously monitor multiple polymerizations in an online manner have not yet been developed. Here, we report our discovery that 5,10,15,20-tetraphenyl-21H,23H-porphine zinc (ZnTPP) is a self-reporting photocatalyst that can mediate PET-RAFT polymerization as well as report on monomer conversion via changes in its fluorescence properties. This enables the use of a microplate reader to conduct high throughput online monitoring of PET-RAFT polymerizations performed directly in 384-well, low volume microtiter plates.t