Copolymerization: 1. General remarks; 2. selective examples of copolymerizations

Dr. Turner Alfrey was a scientific pioneer in the area of copolymerization. Copolymerization is a polymerization process in which more than the minimum number of monomers required to form a polymer are polymerized together to give a product which has incorporated in it the repeat units corresponding to all the monomers employed, and the products thus obtained are called copolymers. Copolymers can also be produced by employing the mutual reactions of functional polymers or oligomers or their reactions with the appropriate monomers. Both step-growth and chain-growth processes, the latter involving a free-radical, ionic, coordination, or ring-opening mechanism, can be used to make copolymers.