Ultrahydrophobic monomer

As a model monomer for radical homopolymerization of hydrophobic monomers, styrene is described in many papers. The polymerization of acrylates and methacrylates is also well known. It could also be shown that the miniemulsion process also easily allows the polymerization of the ultrahydrophobic monomer lauryl methacrylate without any carrier materials as necessary in emulsion polymerization [71]. 

TEM and ultracentrifuge results showed (see Fig. 16) that this process results in effective encapsulation of the carbon with practically complete yield only rather small hybrid particles, but no free carbon or empty polymer particles, were found. It has to be stated that the hybrid particles with high carbon contents do not possess spherical shape, but adopt the typical fractal structure of carbon clusters, coated with a thin but homogeneous polymer film. The thickness of the monomer film depends on the amount of monomer, and the exchange of monomer between different surface layers is - as in miniemulsion polymerization - suppressed by the presence of an ultrahydrophobe. 

---