Copolymerization kinetics of methyl methacrylate-styrene obtained by PLP-MALDI-ToF-MS.
The combination of MALDI-ToF-MS and pulsed laser polymerization has been used to study the propagation rate coefficients for the copolymer system styrene-methyl methacrylate. For the first time, complete information regarding mode of termination, reactivity of photoinitiator-derived radicals, copolymer molecular mass, chemical composition, and copolymerization rates is obtained interrelated. The polymerizations were carried out in bulk with varying styrene concentrations at a temperature of 15.2 degrees C by an excimer pulsed laser with varying frequencies. Both chemical composition distributions and molecular weight distributions were determined by MALDI-ToF-MS. The data were fitted to the implicit penultimate unit model and have resulted in new point estimates of the monomer and radical reactivity ratios for the copolymer system styrene-methyl methacrylate: r(St) = 0.517, r(MMA) = 0.420, s(St) = 0.296, s(MMA) = 0.262. Comparison between Monte Carlo simulations and the obtained results further confirmed the very successful combination of pulsed laser copolymerization experiments with MALDI-ToF-MS. The obtained results are believed to be the most accurate and complete set of copolymerization parameters to date.
Laboratory of Polymer Chemistry, Department of Chemical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands. tokunaga@cat,hokudai.ac.jp
Robin X E
RX
Willemse
Alex M
AM
van Herk