Influence of 2-Methylacryloylxyethyl Trimethyl Ammonium Chloride on the Properties of Cationic Poly(vinyl acetate-butyl acrylate-DMC) Copolymer Emulsions

Abstract

The cationic poly(vinyl acetate-butyl acrylate-DMC) copolymer emulsions were successfully prepared using the emulsion polymerization technique with 2-methylacryloylxyethyl trimethyl ammonium chloride (DMC) as a functional cationic monomer, cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) as the surfactant, and K₂S₂O₈ as the initiator. The morphology, structure and composition, and thermal properties of the emulsions were characterized by TEM, FTIR and DSC, respectively. Also, the correlations between the particle size, zeta potential, viscosity, water absorption and antibacterial efficiency of prepared cationic emulsions and DMC cationic monomer content were established. The results show that the content of the DMC monomer could affect the properties of the emulsions and their films significantly. This offers an attractive opportunity for adjusting the particle size and zeta potential of cationic emulsions over a wide range by feeding DMC monomer in varying concentrations. Furthermore, the prepared emulsions present a high antibacterial efficiency of 98.2% even containing only 2.0 wt% DMC in its monomers, which results in a great potential application as a kind of antibacterial coating material in the future.

Keywords:

• P(VAc-BA-DMC)
• cationic monomers
• emulsion polymerization
• cationic polymer emulsion

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 20974111) and the Sichuan Vinylon Corporation (Chongqing, China) for providing the financial support.