SYNTHESIS OF CORE SHELL LATEXES BY REDOX INITIATION AT AMBIENT-TEMPERATURES

Core-shell polymer composites made by two-stage emulsion polymerizations are useful in many applications. In systems involving a hydrophilic/hydrophobic polymer pair, a core-shell arrangement is thermodynamically unfavorable and may be difficult to achieve. To counteract the thermodynamic forces in such a system, the mobility of the phases can be reduced to such an extent that a core-shell morphology is achieved. This was accomplished in a PMMA/PS two-stage system by lowering the second-stage polymerization temperature to room temperature using a redox initiator. At this relatively low temperature, a core-shell morphology was obtained even when the second-stage was carried out as a batch polymerization.