Grafting of acrylonitrile and methyl methacrylate from their binary mixtures on cellulose using ceric ions

Abstract

Ceric ion-initiated grafting on cellulose from a binary mixture of acrylonitrile and methyl methacrylate was carried out in heterogeneous and acidic conditions at 30 ± 0.1°C in a nitrogen atmosphere. To avoid the complexation of water molecules with Ce(IV) ions, the concentration of the nitric acid was taken to be more than the concentration of ceric ions. The effect of the feed concentration, reaction time, and ceric ions concentration on grafting were investigated at a fixed composition. To investigate the effect of monomer–monomer interactions on grafting, the graft copolymerization was also studied, using different feed compositions (fAN) ranging from 0.25 to 0.80. In this range of feed composition, the synergistic effect of methyl methacrylate molecules has shown an important effect on acrylonitrile monomer and facilitate the incorporation of the acrylonitrile monomer into the grafted chains. The reactivity ratios of acrylonitrile and methyl methacrylate were calculated using the Mayo and Lewis method and were found to be 0.74 and 1.03, respectively. The average sequence lengths of the monomers (mM) were found to be dependent on the feed compositions and found to be arranged in alternate fashion in the grafted chains. The probability of the addition of a monomer (P1,1) to the growing radicals on cellulose ended with its own type of monomer was found to be dependent on the feed composition. The composition of the grafted copolymers, homocopolymers, was determined by IR and elemental analysis for nitrogen. None of the grafted chain on cellulose was found to be made of a single type of monomer. The ceric ion consumption during grafting was found to be independent of the molarity of the feed but shown an appreciable change in the initial few hours of grafting. The variation in the values of the grafting parameters as a function of the reaction conditions is suitably explained. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 79: 767–778, 2001