Continuous synthesis of block copolymer nanoparticles via telescoped RAFT solution and dispersion polymerisation in a miniature CSTR cascade

Miniaturised continuous-flow reactors offer a safe, economical, and scalable route to explore the synthesis of high-value chemical products. In the context of polymer synthesis, precisely defined and tuneable products can be prepared via reversible de-activation radical polymerisation (RDRP) techniques such as reversible addition-fragmentation chain-transfer (RAFT), for which tubular reactors are commonly reported. Herein, we present a miniature continuous stirred-tank reactor (CSTR) cascade for continuous-flow RAFT polymerisation with active mixing throughout, which is found to perform close to a theoretical CSTR cascade for the polymerisations considered in this study. The performance of the reactor is evaluated for both the aqueous solution RAFT polymerisation of N,N-dimethylacrylamide (DMAm) and the RAFT dispersion polymerisation of diacetone acrylamide using a poly(DMAm) macromolecular chain transfer agent (macro-CTA). It was determined that the residence time distribution (RTD) is important for informing the properties of the resulting polymers, with more CSTRs resulting in a narrower molar mass distribution. For particle synthesis by polymerisation-induced self-assembly (PISA), a series of block copolymers were prepared in separate batch and flow experiments for which the particles obtained were found to vary despite comparable molecular weights. Towards the development of a high throughput screening platform, a multi-stage, telescoped tubular-CSTR cascade reactor configuration was applied for inline macro-CTA synthesis and subsequent block extension. Differences in product properties between the processing methods used supports the idea that polymers are so-called ‘products-by-process’; indeed different polymer products can be accessed from the same chemistry through the application of alternative synthesis approaches

Product and process innovation in manufacturing firms: a 30-year bibliometric analysis

Built upon a thirty-year dataset collected from the Web of Science database, the present research aims to offer a comprehensive overview of papers, authors, streams of research, and the most influential journals that discuss product and process innovation in the manufacturing environment. The dataset is composed of 418 papers from more than 150 journals from the period between 1985 and 2015. Homogeneity analysis by means of alternating least squares (HOMALS) and Social Network Analysis (SNA) are used to accomplish the objectives listed above through the keywords given by authors. Initially, the paper highlights and discusses the similarity between the topics debated by the main journals in this field. Subsequently, a wide-range map of topics is presented highlighting five main areas of interests; namely, performance, patent, small firm, product development, and organization. A SNA is also performed in order to validate the results that emerged from HOMALS. Finally, several insights about future research avenues in the manufacturing field are provided

Experiential Perspective in Management Literature: A Systematic Review

The first chapter describes the evolution of the state state-of-the-art of the experiential perspective (ExP) approach in managerial literature, an approach that uses the concept of customer experience management (CEM) in a variety of ways. Through a systematic review, the chapter provides a structured overview of the main studies that use the experiential perspective; this overview is instrumental to in the conceptual scheme of the book developed in the chapter Marketing in an experiential perspective: from “goods and services logic” to “experience logic.” To describe the various approaches in which the authors classify articles, authors, and journals of reference in experiential perspective and customer experience management (ExP and CEM), the authors measure the notoriety of the articles and their authors, in an attempt to assess whether and how their impact dwindles inside the “small world” of ExP and CEM, or whether, instead, it extends to a wider radius that includes management literature. Lastly, the authors define the areas of application (areas of interest, or sectors), where the concept has found its widest application. The chapter, recognizing that the experiential logic is assuming centrality in marketing studies, indicates the need to construct a key to understanding and a conceptual basis of synthesis capable of integrating the various contributions that emerged in the literature into a unified framewor