Effect of reaction medium on the radical polymerization and copolymerization of potassium and sodium p-styrenesulphonate

The kinetics of the homogeneous free radical polymerization of potassium p-styrenesulphonate and sodium p-styrenesulphonate (SSS) in water-salt, water-dioxane, water-dimethyl sulphoxide (DMSO), DMSO—dioxane mixtures and copolymerization of SSS with acrylamide in water-salt and water-DMSO mixtures have been investigated. The overall rate of the process, the kinetic orders with respect to monomer and initiator, overall activation energy and also the properties of the resulting polymers (molecular weight, copolymer composition and compositional inhomogeneity) depend on the nature of the reaction medium. It is mainly connected with the influence of ionic strength (due to varying ionogenic monomer concentration, addition of salts and also the change of the conversion degree) and with the influence of the polarity of solvent on the rate constants for propagation and termination. The chemical and physical characteristic of the reaction mainly influence parameters of the electrostatic interactions in the system “macroradical-counterions-anions of monomer”. This leads to conformational variation of polymer chains and influences the reactivities of growing macroradicals and ionogenic monomers in polymerization and copolymerization. Data on conductivity and viscometric measurements confirmed the dependence of the conformation of polymer and copolymer macromolecules upon the composition of the medium.