Rheology of poly(n-butyl methacrylate) and its composites with calcium carbonate

Abstract

Poly(n-butyl methacrylate) (PBMA) composites with calcium carbonate (CaCO3) were prepared by in situ radical copolymerization of butyl methacrylate (BMA) and methacrylic acid (MA) with precipitated calcium carbonate. To compare the different rheological behaviors of the monomer mixtures with CaCo3 and the composites, the steady and dynamic viscosities of BMA/MA/CaCO3 and poly(BMA/MA/CaCO3) were measured by means of steady and oscillatory shear flows. The viscosity of the mixture BMA/MA/CaCO3 was found to increase evidently with the increasing of CaCO3%. The influence of MA% on viscosity of BMA/MA/CaCO3 was slight. During the in situ polymerization, the viscosity of the reacting system was measurement to be enhanced by a factor of about 104 from the monomer/CaCO3 mixture to composites. The dependency of zero-shear viscosity on molar mass of PBMA was also investigated. The relation between the zero-shear viscosity and molar mass is η0 = 10-15 Mw3.5. The evolution of the viscosity with the temperature for both PBMA and its composites was obtained and time-temperature superposition was used to build master curves for the dynamic moduli. The flow activation energies were found to be 115.0, 148.6, and 178.7 kJ/mol for PBMA, composite PBMA/CaCO3 (90/10), and PBMA/MA/CaCO3 (89/1/10), respectively. The viscosity of the composites containing less than 10% CaCO3 was lower than that of pure PBMA with the same molar mass.