Tubular, Continuous Bulk Polymerization System

The proposed project is to develop a scalable manufacturing process for the production of high optical quality, thermoplastic poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and styrene acrylonitrile (SAN) which is suitable for the fabrication of extrusion processed and/or molded near diffraction-limited optical devices. Akita Innovations will develop a tubular polymerization system for the continuous bulk thermal radical polymerization of MMA monomer. The polymerization reaction system will be built from inexpensive hardware and will be easily scaled by the assembly of a parallel manufacturing system. Our process will build on known science for the production of low-loss thermoplastics through the careful purification on monomer and reagents, careful selection of polymerization initiators and molecular weight control additives and a novel continuous bulk polymerization process.