Experimental Design in Polymer Chemistry-A Guide towards True Optimization of a RAFT Polymerization Using Design of Experiments (DoE).

Despite the great potential of design of experiments (DoE) for efficiency and plannability in academic research, it remains a method predominantly used in industrial processes. From our perspective though, DoE additionally provides greater information gain than conventional experimentation approaches, even for more complex systems such as chemical reactions. Hence, this work presents a comprehensive DoE investigation on thermally initiated reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization of methacrylamide (MAAm).