Synthesis and characterization of polyacrylate modified by polysiloxane latexes and films

In this paper, a new method was designed to prepare polyacrylate modified by polysiloxane latex particles, with methyl methacrylate (MMA) and butyl acrylate (BA) as main monomers, vinyltriethoxysilane (A-151) as functional monomer and octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane (D4) as grafting agent. The chemical structure and morphology of the latexes were characterized by FTIR, TEM, and particle size analyzer. The properties of the films were tested in terms of static contact angle, water absorption and TGA. The results showed that uniform spherical structure and narrow particle size distribution could be obtained in the latexes. Furthermore, the hydrophobicity, low surface free energy and thermal stability were also noticeably increased with the content of polysiloxane. The mechanism of ring opening polymerization between D4 and A-151 was also discussed; it turned out that it was quite important to control the pH under faintly acid conditions.