Composition drift in radical copolymerization

Composition drift in radical copolymerization is a topic of practical importance for the synthesis of homogeneous statistical copolymers and gradient copolymers, which generally does not receive much attention in most polymer chemistry textbooks. The aim of this paper is to provide a tutorial on the topic in which we provide some additional theory in a straightforward and accessible manner and show that composition drift can easily be described quantitatively. Furthermore we show how to circumvent composition drift in a semi-batch approach and by using a continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR).