Poor monomer purity quickly leads to early termination, and solvent polarity has a great effect on reaction rate.
Loosely-coordinated and solvated ion pairs promote more reactive, fast-polymerizing chains, unencumbered by their counterions.
[5] He and a team, composed of Moshe Levy and Ralph Milkovich, attempted to recreate an experiment performed by Weissman to study the electron affinity of styrene.
This observation, coupled with the determination that the product was polystyrene, indicated that a living, anionic polymerization had been initiated by the addition of electrons.
Furthermore, because charge propagation can only occur by covalent bond formation with the compatible monomer species, termination by chain transfer or disproportionation is impossible.