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.