A systematic study of tert-butylacrylamide-methyl acrylate-acrylic acid radical solution terpolymerization

Multi-functional polymers used for personal care products can be synthesized by radical polymerization of acrylic acid (AA) in alcohol/water solutions with non-functional monomers such as methyl acrylate (MA) and N-tert-butylacrylamide (t-BuAAm). However, solvents capable of forming or disrupting hydrogen bonds cause the polymerization kinetics of these monomers to deviate from their polymerization behaviour in bulk and non-polar solvents. In this work, a previous mechanistic model developed for MA/t-BuAAm copolymerization is extended to represent the terpolymerization system MA/t-BuAAm/AA. The additional kinetic coefficients required for the system are estimated from fitting to AA homopolymerizations and AA/MA and AA/t-BuAAm copolymerizations conducted in an ethanol/water solution. In-situ nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is used to follow monomer conversions and composition drift behaviour, with the molar mass distributions of the polymer products characterized by size-exclusion chromatography. Although AA is more reactive than MA in non-polar solvents, the reactivities of the two monomers equalize under the experimental conditions examined. Thus, the batch and semi-batch terpolymerization data collected are represented equally well by a reduced acrylate/t-BuAAm copolymerization model and the full terpolymerization implementation.