Ionic Surfmers Structures

Non ionic Surfmers. The alkoxylation of polymerizable substrates has been for many years a source of building blocks for innovative surfactant species as well as for the synthesis ofhigh performance Surfmers. Some of the early experimental prototypes have evolved into commercial products and the growing understanding of structure-performance relationships... 

A lot of mechanistic problems remain to be solved. It is not so clear, at the moment, why most of the inisurfs studied up to now have such a low efficiency, whatever their structure. On the other hand it is quite remarkable that, even with that low efficiency, they are able to allow the preparation of stable latexes under acceptable experimental conditions. Another problem is the control of the nucleation both with inisurfs and transurfs, there are indications that the particle number and size may not very sensitive to the amount of reactive surfactants, and more dependent on the amount of monomer used. Such behavior, up to now, has not been explainal Very few studies have been devoted to the reactivity of these surfactants, i.e., reactivity ratios for the surfmers, transfer constants for the transurfs and initiator efficiency for the inisurfs. Both the reactivities and the partition coefficient between the water and the organic phase have to be determined. In addition the reactivities may dependent on the other components of the recipe, for instance due to the effect of the ionic strength on the cmc. 

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