Effect of two kinds of imidazolium ionic liquids on the microemulsion polymerization of methyl methylacrylate

In this paper, the microemulsion polymerization of methyl methylacrylate (MMA) was carried out with single and gemini ionic liquids as emulsifier including 1-N-tetradecyl-3-methylimidazolium bromide (C₁₄MIM · Br) and 1, 4-Bis (3-tetradecylimidazolium-1-yl) butane bromide (C₁₄MIM-4-C₁₄MIM · 2Br) respectively, and they were all have typical microemulsion polymerization characters of MMA, but the process of polymerization directly depends on the structure of the imidazolium ionic liquids. The structure and concentration of ionic liquids have effects on the resulted latex particle sizes of PMMA, and much smaller size latexes of PMMA could be gotten with C₁₄MIM · Br as emulsifier than C₁₄MIM-4-C₁₄MIM · 2Br in polymerization. On the other hand, the structure of emulsifier has the effects on the molecular weight (MW) and molecular weight distribution (MWD) of PMMA, so the resulting PMMA prepared from microemulsion polymerization with C₁₄MIM · Br as emulsifier has higher MW but narrower MWD than that of PMMA with the same dosage of C₁₄MIM-4-C₁₄MIM · 2Br as emulsifier.