Synthesis strategies to incorporate acrylic acid into N‐vinylcaprolactam‐based microgels |
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| Authors: | Ainara Imaz Jacqueline Forcada |
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| Institution: | Departamento de Química Aplicada, Facultad de Ciencias Químicas, Institute for Polymer Materials POLYMAT and Grupo de Ingeniería Química, Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, Apdo. 1072, San Sebastián‐Donostia 20080, Spain |
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| Abstract: | Two different synthesis strategies were used to synthesize N‐vinylcaprolactam (VCL)‐acrylic acid (AA)‐based temperature‐ and pH‐sensitive microgels under the adequate conditions to avoid possible hydrolysis of VCL due to the presence of carboxylic groups provided by AA. Polymeric and colloidal features of the microgels were analyzed: the partial conversion evolutions of each comonomer were determined by 1H NMR and the swelling/deswelling behavior by means of Photon Correlation Spectroscopy. Considering that microgels are porous soft nanoparticles, conductimetric titrations at the swollen state were carried out to calculate the volumetric charge density. The results indicate that the addition of AA after 30 minutes of reaction time helped to incorporate higher amounts of AA into microgels and as a result, to obtain both temperature‐ and pH‐sensitive nanoparticles. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem, 2011 |
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| Keywords: | emulsion polymerization kinetics microgels stimuli‐sensitive polymers |
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