Kinetic Study of the Thermopolymerization of Furfuryl Methacrylate (FM) by Mathematical Modeling, 2–Moments of Molecular Size Distribution of the Primary Chains in the Networks Jurgen Lange,* Angel E. Lozano, In ˜ı ´go Garcı ´a-Yoldi 1. Introduction Acrylfuranic compounds [furfuryl methacrylate (FM) and furfuryl acrylate (FA), see Figure 1] have been considered as possible candidates to replace the monofuntional mono- mers (e.g., methyl methacrylate, MMA) used in preparation of certain polymeric biomaterials. [1] These compounds have shown promise in the formulation of various products for use in dentistry, such as pit and fissure sealants, and in orthopedics as bone cements. In the latter case, acryl- furanics due to their enthalpy and low degree of shrinkage on setting, can directly substitute MMA, the monomer most commonly used as the liquid part of this material. [2] In addition, the capacity of these monomers to form hydrogels by co-polymerization with co-monomers of hydrophilic nature (such as vinylpyrrolidone or 2-hydroxyethyl metha- crylate) has been proved. [3] Such hydrogels have been used in controlled drug delivery systems which have shown promising results. [4,5] In these drug delivery systems, the permeability and/or diffusion of the drug, as well as the swelling degree, depend notably on parameters that characterize the three-dimen- sional network structure used as a matrix, such as average crosslink density (ACD) ð rÞ, and mean length or molecular weight of chains between crosslink (for instance, number- average primary chain length, X n ). [6,7] These parameters are not easily obtained by experimental via, however, they can Full Paper J. Lange Centro de Biomateriales, Universidad de La Habana, Habana, P.O. Box 10300, Cuba E-mail: jurgen@biomat.uh.cu A. E. Lozano, I. Garcı ´a-Yoldi Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnologı ´a de Polı ´meros, CSIC, Juan de la Cierva 3, 28006 Madrid, Spain The formation kinetics and structure of three-dimensional networks in free radical polymeri- zation of FM thermally initiated at high temperature are studied by analysis of zero and first- order moments of molecular size distribution of primary chains (MSDPC) in the networks. Zero-order moment values of MSDPC reveal that the system elapses as a living radical polymerization. Also, by means of the analysis of these moments and the first-order ones of MSDPC, the sigmoidal shape of polymerization kinetic curves can be explained. On the other hand, the results of average crosslink density obtained using moment values of MSDPC suggest that this parameter does not change with polymerization temperature. Macromol. Theory Simul. 2012, 21, 241–249 ß 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim wileyonlinelibrary.com DOI: 10.1002/mats.201100087 241