Grafting of gelatin during polymerization of methyl methacrylate in aqueous medium

✍ Scribed by Jaroslav Stejskal; Dagmar Straková; Pavel Kratochvíl

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1988
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 817 KB
• Volume: 36
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0021-8995
• DOI: 10.1002/app.1988.070360117

✦ Synopsis

When methyl methacrylate is polymerized in aqueous medium in the presence of gelatin, graft copolymer macromolecules with gelatine backbones and poly(methy1 methacrylate) (PMMA) grafts are formed. Due to the presence of graft copolymer, polymolecular micelles consisting of about 100 macromolecules are created. These micelles prevent macroscopic precipitation of PMMA. Fractionation in demixing solvents has been used to separate the components of the polymerization mixture, and the light-scattering method has been employed to determine their molecular weights. Each grafted macromolecule carries about one graft. The hypothesis of random grafting from gelatin backbones seems to explain most of the experimental observations.