synthesis and assessment of the effect of monomer feed ratio and lewis acids on copolymerization of butyl methacrylate/1-octene

This study was designed to investigate the effect of molar ratio of 1-octene and type as well as concentration of lewis acids on the free radical copolymerization of butyl methacrylate (bma) with 1-octene. the synthesized copolymers have been substantially described by ftir, 1 h nmr, gpc and dsc. the quantitative 1 h nmr and gpc demonstrated that by increase in the molar ratio of 1-octene and lewis acids to bma, the incorporation of 1-octene in the copolymer backbone enhanced, mn reduced and polydispersity became narrower. the maximum incorporation of 1-octene (13.7%) was observed for sample csc7 having [1-octene/bma] of 3 mol% and [alcl3 / bma] of 1.5 mol%. the dsc results confirmed the nmr and gpc outcomes, suggesting a decrease in tg by increasing 1-octene in the copolymer backbone. moreover, it is found that temperature has a remarkable influence on the copolymerization behavior. the results also showed that by substituting the acrylate monomer from butyl methacrylate to butyl acrylate, the incorporation of 1-octene increased.