Synthesis of Poly(styrene-acrylates-acrylic acid) Microspheres and Their Chemical Composition towards Colloidal Crystal Films

Luis A Ríos-Osuna,Norma A Cortez-Lemus,Angel Licea-Claverie,F Paraguay-Delgado

doi:10.1155/2016/4527526

Abstract

In this paper, polystyrene colloidal microspheres have been prepared using hexyl acrylate (HA), ethylhexyl acrylate (EHA), isooctyl acrylate (IOA), butyl acrylate (BA), or isobutyl acrylate (IBA) as comonomers. Microspheres with diameters from 212 to 332 nm and with a polystyrene content of 65–78% were prepared. The particles prepared in this work do not present the typical core-shell structure; as a consequence, DSC analysis showed that the microspheres exhibited only one Tg. TEM images show that the particles with comonomer content below ~30% were spherical and regular. Microspheres containing comonomer between 21 to 25% produced the less brittle films showing very iridescent colors. The films prepared from microspheres containing hexyl, ethylhexyl, and isooctyl acrylate as comonomers are firmly attached to the substrate due to their adhesive properties. The large decrease of the fragility observed in these films makes them much more attractive materials in sensing applications.

Highlights

Colloidal polymeric microspheres have been extensively studied as candidates for construction of photonic crystals used in many optical applications, such as sensors, bioassays, color displays, solar energy, and lasers [1, 2]
Styrene (Sty), hexyl acrylate (HA), ethylhexyl acrylate (EHA), isooctyl acrylate (IOA), butyl acrylate (BA), and isobutyl acrylate (IBA) reagents were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich and were used after inhibitor was removed by passing the monomers through a column of inhibitor remover (Sigma-Aldrich)
The first goal was to obtain a series of new polymeric microspheres in one step via batch emulsion polymerization of styrene with several acrylates such as hexyl acrylate, ethylhexyl acrylate, isooctyl acrylate, butyl acrylate, or isobutyl acrylate as comonomers

Summary

Introduction

Colloidal polymeric microspheres have been extensively studied as candidates for construction of photonic crystals used in many optical applications, such as sensors, bioassays, color displays, solar energy, and lasers [1, 2] For most of these applications, size control, narrow size distribution, surface electrical properties, morphology, copolymer composition, and cost become important [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. The authors demonstrated the core-shell morphology with polystyrene in the core and elastomeric poly(methyl methacrylate-b-acrylic acid) shell using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). They estimated the chemical composition distribution from the surface to the interior of the microsphere. The hard polystyrene core and soft shell structure has been demonstrated using TEM with chemical staining since the core and the shell densities are very similar [11, 20,21,22]

Methods

Results

Conclusion