Radiation grafting of N,N-dimethylaminoethylmethacrylate and.pdf

Polymer Bulletin 47, 571-577 (2002) Polymer Bulletin ? Springer-Verlag 2002 Radiation grafting of N,N-dimethylaminoethylmethacrylate and 4-vinylpyridine onto polypropylene by the one- and two-step methods E. Bucio, R. Aliev ( ), G. Burillo Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, UNAM, Ciudad Universitaria, 04510, Mexico, D.F. Received: 30 April 2001/Revised version: 21 October 2001/Accepted: 28 November 2001 Summary Radiation grafting of N,N-dimethylaminoethylmethacrylate (DMAEMA) and 4- vinylpyridine (4-VP) from the 50% monomers solutions in toluene and dichloroethane onto polypropylene (PP) films was carried by their mutual γ-irradiation (one-step method). In the two-step method, the grafting of DMAEMA or 4-VP from their solutions in toluene was performed onto PP modified preliminary with the other polymer (poly4- VP or polyDMAEMA). It has been found that chemical structure of PP modified with the first grafted polymer affected the efficiency of the other monomer grafting by the second step. Introduction In recent years there has been increasing interest in developing novel functional materials based on the use of strong noncovalent interactions for holding together molecular components (1-3). The system consists in mixing one functional homopolymer and one functional compound. The main application of this concept is the design of polymeric liquid crystalline (LC) materials. It is known that homopolymers obtained from monomers, containing tertiary amino groups, such as N,N-dimethylaminoethyl- methacrylate (DMAEMA) or 4-vinylpyridine (4-VP) form salts with several benzoic acid derivatives but these compounds are often hygroscopic and have poor mechanical properties (2,3). Therefore preliminary graft polymerization of these monomers onto hydrophobic and mechanically durable polymer matrices is of interest. Radiation grafting of DMAEMA onto polyethylene (PE) as well as salts of poly(DMAEMA-g-PE) with benzoic acids formation were reported earlier (4,5). Choice of matrices i