Morphology and thermodynamic analysis of composite polymer particles prepared by soap-free emulsion polymerization in the presence of poly(methyl methacrylate) and polystyrene as biseeds

✍ Scribed by Xingshou Pang; Guoxiang Cheng; Shulai Lu

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 178 KB
• Volume: 92
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0021-8995
• DOI: 10.1002/app.20242

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Biseeds emulsion polymerization was investigated with poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and polystyrene (PSt) as biseeds and styrene (St) as second‐stage monomer, as well as with thermodynamic analysis; namely, the principle of minimum interfacial free‐energy change was utilized to explain the competitiveness of different seeds for second‐stage monomer and the final equilibrium morphology of composite polymer particles. The experimental results indicated the polymeric particles prepared had bimodal size distribution and the PMMA seed particles showed a higher chance of obtaining St than that of the PSt seed particles, which was in agreement with the computational outcome by the principle of minimum interfacial free‐energy change. Owing to the kinetic factors, the equilibrium morphology could not be reached in the experiments. However, the results demonstrated that double or multiple seeds emulsion polymerization could be used as a model experiment to study the morphology of polymer particle and the morphological prediction. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 92: 2675–2680, 2004