Radical polymerization of benzyl N-(2,6-dimethylphenyl)itaconamate

✍ Scribed by Tsuneyuki Sato; Takashi Kitajima; Makiko Seno

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 216 KB
• Volume: 35
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0887-624X
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0518(19970730)35:10<1891::aid-pola3>3.0.co;2-r

✦ Synopsis

The polymerization of benzyl N- (2,6-dimethylphenyl)itaconamate (BDMPI) with benzoyl peroxide (BPO) in N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) was studied kinetically by ESR. The polymerization rate (R p ) at 70ЊC was given by R p Å k[BPO] 0.78 [BDMPI] 1.1 . The overall activation energy of polymerization was determined to be 83.7 kJ/mol. The number-average molecular weight of poly(BDMPI) was in the range of 1500-2000 by gel permeation chromatography. From the ESR study, the polymerization system was found to involve ESR-observable propagating radicals of BDMPI under practical polymerization conditions. Using the polymer radical concentration by ESR, the rate constants of propagation (k p ) and termination (k t ) were determined in the temperature range of 50-70ЊC. The k p value seemed dependent on the chain-length of propagating radical. The analysis of polymers by the MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry suggested that most of the resulting polymers contain the dimethylamino terminal group. The copolymerization of BDMPI (M 1 ) and styrene (M 2 ) at 50ЊC in DMF gave the following copolymerization parameters; r 1 Å 0.49, r 2 Å 0.26, Q 1 Å 1.2, and e 1 Å /0.63. The thermal behavior of poly(BDMPI) was examined by dynamic thermogravimetry and differential scanning calorimetry.