Copper mediated controlled radical copolymerization of styrene and 2-ethylhexyl acrylate and determination of their reactivity ratios.

Bishnu P Koiry,Nikhil K Singha

doi:10.3389/fchem.2014.00091

Bishnu P Koiry, Nikhil K Singha

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fchem.2014.00091

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Abstract

Copolymerization is an important synthetic tool to prepare polymers with desirable combination of properties which are difficult to achieve from the different homopolymers concerned. This investigation reports the copolymerization of 2-ethylhexyl acrylate (EHA) and styrene using copper bromide (CuBr) as catalyst in combination with N,N,N′,N″,N″- pentamethyldiethylenetriamine (PMDETA) as ligand and 1-phenylethyl bromide (PEBr) as initiator. Linear kinetic plot and linear increase in molecular weights vs. conversion indicate that copolymerization reactions were controlled. The copolymer composition was calculated using 1H NMR studies. The reactivity ratio of styrene and EHA (r1 and r2) were determined using the Finemann–Ross (FR), inverted Finemann–Ross (IFR), and Kelen–Tudos (KT) methods. Thermal properties of the copolymers were also studied by using TGA and DSC analysis.

Highlights

The homopolymer and copolymers of 2-ethylhexyl acrylate (EHA) have very good film formation characteristics and have very good low temperature flexibility, because of the presence of branched and longer alkyl pendant group in the EHA
We reported the atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) of furfuryl methylacrylate and methyl methacrylate (Kavitha and Singha, 2007), 2-ethylhexyl acrylate and glycidyl methacrylate (Haloi et al, 2009)
This linear dependency is the characteristics of the controlled polymerization reaction which follows the first order kinetics

Summary

Introduction

The homopolymer and copolymers of 2-ethylhexyl acrylate (EHA) have very good film formation characteristics and have very good low temperature flexibility, because of the presence of branched and longer alkyl pendant group in the EHA. The reactivity ratios of monomers predict the copolymer composition as well as the sequence distribution of the comonomers. It predicts the properties of the copolymer. This is because in CRP processes there is intermittent activation-deactivation of the active species www.frontiersin.org

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