Preparation of epoxy-functionalized AES (GAES) resins by high-temperature bulk polymerization

Abstract In this paper, the monomers of styrene (St), acrylonitrile (AN), and glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) were grafted onto ethylene-propylene-diene-monomer (EPDM) rubbers, and the epoxy-functionalized AES (GAES) resins were successfully prepared by high-temperature bulk polymerization. The effects of polymerization reaction conditions, i.e. the content of initiator and chain transfer agent, the content of EPDM and GMA on the grafting rate, composition of free copolymers, molecular weights and their distributions of GAES resins were investigated in detail. The influence of GMA content on the thermal stabilities of GAES resins were also discussed. Experimental results showed that under the optimized experimental conditions, the highest grafting rate of GAES resins reached to 48.8% and the grafting efficiency was 35.3%. Under the same reaction conditions, the molecular weights of free copolymers can reach to 70,000 g mol− 1. The content of initiator and chain transfer agent had no obvious influence on the composition of free copolymers, but the component of GMA in free copolymers increased gradually with increasing content of EPDM. TG analysis results indicated that the incorporation of GMA decreased the thermal stabilities of GAES resins.