Investigation of catalytic chain transfer copolymerization of methacrylates

Batch experiments were carried out to investigate the kinetics of catalytic chain transfer copolymerization of methyl methacrylate and n-butyl methacrylate. The Predici (R) model developed to represent the system describes the numerous experimental data measured at high concentrations of Co(II) catalyst, taking into account the chain-length dependencies of termination, propagation and catalytic chain transfer. The constants for catalytic chain transfer are determined as 2.3 x 10(4) for both methyl methacrylate and n-butyl methacrylate from fitting the experimental data. Two inhibition mechanisms are shown to describe the decrease of the polymerization rate in the presence of catalyst equally well, with an unknown impurity dissolved in initiator introduced to explain experimental profiles measured at high initiator concentrations.