The number of reports using continuous flow technology in tubular reactors to perform precision polymerizations has grown enormously in recent years. Flow polymerizations allow highly efficient preparation of polymers exhibiting well-defined molecular characteristics, and has been applied to a slew of monomers and various polymerization mechanisms, including anionic, cationic, radical, and ring-opening. Polymerization conducted in continuous flow offers several distinct advantages, including improved efficiency, reproducibility, and enhanced safety for exothermic polymerizations using highly toxic components, high pressures, and high temperatures. The further development of this technology is thus of relevance for many industrial polymerization processes. While much progress has been demonstrated in recent years, opportunities remain for increasing the compositional and architectural complexity of polymeric materials synthesized in a continuous fashion. Extending the reactor processing principles that have heretofore been focused on optimizing homopolymerization to include multisegment block copolymers, particularly from monomers that propagate via incompatible mechanisms, represents a major challenge and coveted target for continuous flow polymerization. Likewise, the spatial and temporal control of reactivity afforded by flow chemistry has and will continue to enable the production of complex polymeric architectures. This Viewpoint offers a brief background of continuous flow polymerization focused primarily on tubular (micro)reactors and includes selected examples that are relevant to these specific developments.

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连续流动中的聚合：多种聚合物材料合成的最新进展

近年来，使用管式反应器中的连续流动技术进行精密聚合的报告数量大幅增加。流动聚合允许高效制备具有明确分子特征的聚合物，并已应用于大量单体和各种聚合机制，包括阴离子、阳离子、自由基和开环。在连续流动中进行的聚合具有几个明显的优势，包括提高效率、再现性和提高使用剧毒组分、高压和高温的放热聚合的安全性。因此，该技术的进一步发展与许多工业聚合工艺相关。尽管近年来取得了很大进展，增加以连续方式合成的聚合物材料的组成和结构复杂性的机会仍然存在。将迄今为止专注于优化均聚的反应器加工原理扩展到包括多段嵌段共聚物，特别是来自通过不相容机制传播的单体，代表了连续流动聚合的主要挑战和令人垂涎的目标。同样，流动化学对反应性的空间和时间控制已经并将继续使复杂聚合物结构的生产成为可能。该观点提供了主要关注管式（微）反应器的连续流动聚合的简要背景，并包括与这些特定发展相关的选定示例。