Graft polymerization of acrylic monomers onto starch fractions. III. Effect of carbohydrate structure

Grafted PMMA was isolated by the acid hydrolysis method. Weight-average and number-average molecular weights were determined by gel permeation chromatography. The number-average molecular weight of the grafted chains was about 475,000 for amylopectin and 403,000 for amylose. The number of grafted chains (mmol) ranged from 2.4 × 10^?3 to 4.6 × 10^?3 for amylopectin graft copolymers and from 2.9 × 10^?3 to 6.8 × 10^?3 for those of amylose. These results were related to others obtained from ceric ion consumption studies. The values suggest that amylopectin, because of its complex structure, favors a higher consumption of ceric ion in homopolymerization reactions and inhibits the initiation reactions of the copolymerization.