Monitoring the synthesis and properties of copolymeric polycations.

The kinetics; evolution of molar mass; solution conductivity, sigma; intrinsic viscosity; and average composition drift; and distribution were determined by monitoring the synthesis of copolymeric polycations of acrylamide (Am) and [2-(acryloyloxy)ethyl]-trimethylammonium chloride (Q9). The quantitative relationship between diminishing sigma and charged co-monomers incorporation was monitored for the first time and provided novel data on counterion condensation, which occurs gradually over a broad composition regime. This new capability allows predictions concerning the relationship between copolymer composition and linear charge density, xi, to be tested and models of trivariate mass, composition, and xi distributions to be built. This approach, hence, brings together the previously disparate fields of synthetic chemistry of copolymers and physical chemical properties of polyelectrolytes. Monitoring was achieved with a new implementation of the ACOMP (automatic continuous online monitoring of polymerization reactions) platform. Reactivity ratios determined by ACOMP were rQ9 = 0.47 and rAm = 1.10. Opposite trends in composition drift and final molar mass were found; low starting percentage of Q9 led to low composition drift and high molar mass, whereas the opposite was found at high starting percentage of Q9. Complementary end-product analysis by multidetector gel permeation chromatography supported the ACOMP results. End-product polyelectrolyte properties were characterized by automatic continuous mixing, revealing that combined electrostatic persistence length and excluded volume effects led to the expected large changes in polyelectrolyte conformation and interactions. These results set the groundwork for semibatch control of molar mass, composition, and xi, and eventually for monitoring and control for inverse emulsion-based reactions of this type.