Synthesis and characterisation of poly(epichlorohydrin-g-Fe3O4/congo red)-co-poly(methylmethacrylate)

Abstract

A magnetic and fluorescent copolymer nanocomposite was prepared and characterized by various analytical techniques. Poly(epichlorohydrin) (PECH) was prepared by solution polymerization method using methacrylic acid as a chemical initiator and its copolymer was prepared by emulsion polymerization. After the structural modification of the copolymer with a nanohybrid system, its thermal properties were improved. The nanohybrid system consisting of Congo red dye decorated ferrite nanoparticles was synthesized by the conventional method and characterized by UV–Visible, fluorescence emission and excitation spectroscopy methods, high resolution transmission electron microscopy, and vibrating sample magnetometer techniques. Due to the decoration and encapsulation phenomena, the magnetic moment value of Fe3O4 was found to be decreased. While increasing the loading of nanohybrid system, the glass transition temperature (T g) of poly(methylmethacrylate) was increased. The TGA study inferred that by increasing the loading of nanohybrid system, the percentage weight residue remained above 550 °C was also increased. The chemical grafting of nanohybrid system onto the PECH-based copolymer backbone was confirmed by NMR spectroscopy and GPC analysis. The weight average molecular weight (M w) of the copolymer and nanohybrid-grafted copolymer exhibited higher M w than that of the PECH homopolymer. In the present study, we simply prepared a novel material and characterized it by various analytical methods.