In-situ Water Based Emulsion Copolymerization of Styrene/ Ethylhexyl Acrylate in Presence of Cloisite 15A☆

Abstract Nowadays, due to the outstanding chemical and physical properties of nanomaterials such as montmorillonite, which is resulted from increased surface area to volume ratio of montmorillonite platelets (high aspect ratio), they are using in many applications for fabrication of special products having higher barrier properties and so on. Major challenge in this work is dispersing well of nanoclay sheets within the polymeric matrix completely, to obtain the best structure (with high degree of intercalation and exfoliation). In this paper, we synthesized poly (styrene-co-2-ethylhexyl acrylate) / montmorillonite in order to receive a well dispersed structure of nanocomposite through in-situ emulsion copolymerization in water. The FTIR method was used to characterize the copolymer structure. The dispersion of nanoparticles through polymer matrix was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) for samples having nanoclay. The dispersibility and size of MMT particles was investigated by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) for obtained nanocomposite. In all cases we obtained reasonable polymer conversions up to 98% which was calculated by gravimetrical measurements.