A simple modification to atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) was introduced in 2007 to kinetically control the polymerization by increasing the ratio of inactive copper(II) catalyst to active copper(I) catalyst. The modification to this strategy is termed deactivation enhanced ATRP, whereby different ratios of copper(II)/copper(I) are added. Alternatively a copper(II) catalyst may be used in the presence of small amounts of a reducing agent such as ascorbic acid to produce low percentages of copper(I) in situ and to control the ratio of copper (II)/copper (I). Deactivation enhanced ATRP features the decrease of the instantaneous kinetic chain length ν as defined by:,
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meaning an average number of monomer units are added to a propagating chain end during each activation/deactivation cycle, The resulting chain growth rate is slowed down to allow sufficient control over the reaction thus greatly increasing the percentage of multi-vinyl monomers in the reaction system (even up to 100 percent (homopolymerization)).