Polyacrylamide-Polystyrene And Polyacrylic Acid-Polystyrene Interpenetrating Polymer Networks

Interpenetrating polymer networks (IPN) is a new method to prepare the polymer blends. Extensive academic and industrial researches have become interested in IPNs. In nowadays, IPNs technology has widely applied in engineering and functional polymer materials . However, up to the present, the hydrophilicity or hydrophobicity of the polymer networks composed the IPNs is mostly homologic. The reports of the ydrophilic-hydrophobic IPNs are very few. Further more , the IPNs funtional polymer materials are also rarely reported.Crosslinked poly ( methylacrylate-co-triallyisocyanuate ) was synthesized by conventional suspension approach. The polymethylacrylate (PMA) was immersed in a solution of styrene monomer , containing divnylbenzene ( DVB ) in the desired proportion and initiator for a few hours , then polymerizing the second networks by the same way to forms a sequential interpenetrating polymer networks(IPNs) based on polymethylacrylate (PMA) and polystrene (PS) . The PMA-PS IPNs were aminated with diethenetriamine (DETA) .Thus the hydrophobic PMA networks were converted into hydrophilic polyacrylamide (PAM) networks, so hydrophilic-hydrophobic IPNs were obtained. After hydrolysising the PMA-PS IPNs, the hydrophilic-hydrophobic IPNs composed of polyacrylic acid (PAA) and PS were also obtained.Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurements indicated that: (1) The sequential PMA-PS IPNs can be compatibilized increasing the crosslinking density both of the PMA network and the PS network;(2) the miscibility of the sequential PMA-PS IPNs decreased while increasing the PS network mass percent ; (3) the phase separation between hydrophilic polymer network (PAM and PAA) and hydrophobic...