Radical Copolymerizations of Acrylic Acid with Ethyl Acrylate in the Presence of Carbon Tetrabromide

Abstract

Radical copolymerizations of acrylic acid (AA) with ethyl acrylate (EA) in the presence or absence of carbon tetrabromide (CTB) were carried out in dioxane at 50°C. The monomer reactivity ratios in the presence of CTB were almost identical with the values in the absence of CTB, which were 0.91 (r_a) and 1.02 (r_e). The chain-transfer constants to CTB were precisely determined to be 0.16 (C_sa) for AA and 0.35 (C_se) for EA by using a new method which did not involve the evaluation of the apparent chain-transfer constant in the copolymerizations.