Design, development, and evaluation of monovinyl acrylates characterized by secondary functionalities as reactive diluents to diacrylates

This study focuses on the design and development of novel monovinylic (meth)acrylate monomers with enhanced polymerization kinetics and the evaluation of their performance as reactive diluents in diacrylate systems. Novel (meth)acrylic monomers characterized by several new secondary functionalities are developed in this study and are shown to exhibit reactivities 10-70 fold greater than traditional monoacrylates such as hexyl acrylate. These monomers were designed based on our understanding of interactions between monomer structure, polymerizations kinetics, and polymer properties. Performance of these monovinyl monomers as reactive diluents is also investigated in this study. Copolymerization of these monomers with diacrylates enhanced both the reactivity and the mechanical properties of the diacrylate system. Specifically, while copolymerization of a diacrylate system with traditional monoacrylates such as hexyl acrylate decreases the overall reactivity of the system, its copolymerization with the novel monomers led to comonomer mixtures that were 30-50% more reactive than either of the individual components, with initial polymerization rates increased by as much as 2 times that of the more reactive component. Furthermore, the copolymerization of these novel monovinyl systems with diacrylates also enabled formation of polymers with enhanced mechanical properties over the corresponding diacrylates including a more homogeneous network structure as indicated by a glass transition temperature that was narrowed by up to 55% while increasing the glass transition temperature by as much as 10 degrees C.