Estudio y Caracterización de PMMA Obtenido Mediante Polimerización en Emulsión por Ultrasonido de Alta Frecuencia

In this work the synthesis of polymethylmethacrylate is carried out by high frequency ultrasonic method through emulsion polymerization via free radicals. The reactants are an aqueous solution of an anionic surfactant, sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) or a cationic surfactant ammonium cethytrimethylbromide (CTAB) in concentrations of 0.5,1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 % p/v and the methylmethacrylate monomer (MMA) in 14, 10, 8 and 6% v/v. When SLS is used in the reaction the maximum conversion reached is 50% for monomer and surfactant concentrations of 8 and 1.5 % v/v, respectively. In the synthesis using CTAB a maximum conversion of 25% was obtained with 8% v7v of MMA and the maximum surfactant concentration used (2.0 % p/v). The caracterization was carried out by infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), diferencial scanning calorimetry (DSC) scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and proton nuclear magnetic resonante ( 1 H NMR) It was observed that under certain synthesis conditions small amounts of surfactant remain present in the polymer structure for the reactions carried out with SLS and in higher concentrations when CTAB was employed. The calorimetric study show glass transition temperatures in the range of 106-123 oC. These results together with those from 1 H NMR show the formation of highly syndiotactic PMMA, with a good percentage of hetereotacticity. SEM characterization show the typical speherical morphology of the latex particles with an average size in the range of 65-100 nm for the synthesis using SLS and in the range of 65 nm-0.3μm for the synthesis with CTAB.