Photocatalytic Synthesis Of Isopentenyl Polyether-Acrylate Copolymer Over Fe-TiO₂ And Its Performance

Nowadays, applications of TiO₂ in photocatalytic areas mainly include degradation of organic pollutants, oxidation-reduction reaction, and so on. Some researchers use photocatalyst for the synthesis of organic compounds, such as carbonylation and olefins oxidation, polymerization. Generally speaking, polymerization uses the single and monomeric organic compounds over heterogeneous catalysts in an organic solvent and the yield is usually low. To tackle these problems in photocatalytic polymerization, we adopted the sol-del method to modify photocatalyst that catalyzed the polymerization synergistically. The process improved the yield of the desired products and obtained an isopentenyl polyether-acrylate copolymer in chains and larger molecular weight.In this study, TiO₂ and Fe-TiO₂ nanoparticles were prepared and modified. isopentenyl polyether-acrylate copolymer was obtained by the photocatalytic copolymerization of isopentenyl polyether and small monomer over the modified nanoparticles.The iron-doped TiO₂ photocatalyst was prepared via a sol-gel route. The textural properties and crystal structure of the Fe-TiO₂ photocatalyst were characterized by means of nitrogen adsorption-desorption, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy?XPS?, scanning electron microscopy, and X-ray diffraction. The photocatalytic synthesis parameters of isopentenyl polyether-acrylate copolymer were examined. The performance of this copolymer was evaluated. The influence of photocatalyst dosage and reactant monomer ratio on the dispersion of copolymer was also probed. The concrete testing results reveal that the appropriate synthesis conditions were: Fe-TiO₂ dosage = 3.5%, n?polyether monomer?: n?acrylic acid monomer? = 1 : 4.5.