Towards a one-step method for preparing silica/polymer heterodimers and dimpled polymer particles
Résumé
Silica/PS and silica/PMMA heterodimers were obtained in very good yields using 80 nm silica particles first functionalized with a polymerizable alkoxysilane and then used as seeds for the emulsion polymerization of either styrene or methyl methacrylate. Aiming at a one-pot and scalable process, a commercial silica sol was used and the grafting reaction of silica with the functional silane was directly performed in the mixture of surfactants subsequently used for the polymerization. The effect of silica content, nature and concentration of the surfactant, of the reactive alkoxysilane or of the monomer, on the formation of the silica/PS heterodimers was investigated. Either dumbbell- or snowman-like dimers
were obtained depending on monomer conversion. The typical morphological yield reached 60% with respect to all morphologies. The synthesis of silica/PMMA dumbbell-like dimers was also successful. In addition to TEM and DLS, the emerging technique of charge detection mass spectrometry (CD-MS) was used to provide the mass distribution and the sample composition in terms of morphologies. Finally, this system also proved to be efficient for the synthesis of dimpled polymer particles
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