Surfmers using ionic

The work of Guyot [7] reviews the use and effects of ionic Surfmers in different polymerization processes. 

However one constraint of alkoxylated Surfmers is their cloud point versus the polymerization temperature. If the former is lower than the latter, salting-out of the Surfmer occurs, with loss of surface activity and reactivity. The cloud point of nonionic alkoxylates can be adjusted to a certain extent by the choice of the alkoxylation initiator, the relative percentage of hydrophilic and hydrophobic alkoxylation moieties and their order of addition. Also, introducing some ionic character in the molecule (e.g. by weak polar groups that do not substantially affect the nonionic behavior of the molecule) may prove useful. Nevertheless there have been and there can be instances where nonionic Surfmers cannot be used. 

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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