Water-soluble acrylic polymers are widely used as thickeners, dispersants and flocculants in many applications such as coatings, concrete admixtures and water treatment. The performance of such polymers is significantly influenced by their molecular architectures. Size exclusion chromatography coupled with multi-angle light scattering detection (SEC-MALS) is used to investigate the molecular architecture of water-soluble acrylic comb polymers and traditional acrylic polymers. Figure 1 illustrates the estimation of the polymer persistence length via Kratky-Porod chain model.  It is found that 1) all polymers investigated have a random coil configuration since the slopes of conformation plots are from 0.5 to 0.6; 2) the estimated apparent persistence length, a measure of polymer chain stiffness, of comb polymers increases with increasing the comb brush length significantly and also increases with increasing absolute molecular weight; 3) with the same molecular weight, poly(acrylic acid) has a larger radius of gyration than acrylic comb polymers but the estimated persistence length can be lower than the comb polymers depending on the comb brush length. The potential reasons for the observed phenomena are discussed in some detail.

Advanced characterization of acrylic polymers by size exclusion chromatography coupled with multi-angle light scattering detection

248th National Meeting (2014)

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