Abstract
An unseeded surfactant-free styrene emulsion polymerization is employed to prepare core-crosslinked particles with poly (ethylene oxide) monomethyl ether (mPEO) macro-revesible addition fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) agent as both the stabilizer and the control agent. The pegylated amphiphilic macro-RAFT agent (mPEO5000-TTC) was synthesized via coupling poly(ethylene oxide) monomethyl ether with a hydrophobic dodecyl trithiocarbonate chain and utilized to form the micelles and control the polymerization and crosslinking of styrene in aqueous solution. The FTIR, 1H NMR, TEM (transmission electron microscopy), dynamic light scattering (DLS) were used to clarify the structure and morphology of nanoparticle. The thermal performance of nanoparticles was measured by TGA (thermogravimetric analysis). The results showed that with the increasing of concentration monomer, the produced size of particles enlarged and then tended to be maximum, while the thermal stability was decreased comparative to the mPEO precursor. The thermal stability of crosslinked particles reflected lower than that of uncrosslinked, which is elucidated with formation and collapse of micelles and micro-phase separation.
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