The polymerization and performance of fluorinated acrylic copolymer with low surface energy

Fluoro-polymer is of great importance as coating materials because of their excellent resistance to high temperature, chemicals and organic solvents. In the interest of researching low surface energy coating, a kind of copolymer was prepared by solution polymerization method, using methyl methacrylate, butyl acrylate, 2-hydroxyethyl acrylate and perfluoroalkyl ethyl acrylate whose length of fluorinated carbon chain was from 6 to 12. Solid content, monomer conversion rate and viscosity of the copolymer were measured. Parallel experiments were separately carried out with different contents of initiator and fluorinated monomer. The results showed that the water contact angle of the film becomes bigger with the increase of the content of fluorinated monomer, with the biggest value in 108 when the content of fluorinated monomer content is 30 wt%, but only changing little after content of fluorinated monomer reaches up 15 wt%. The results indicated that the copolymer can offer the best property combination when the contents of fluorinated monomer and initiator were 15 wt% and 1.8 wt%.