Synthesis and characterization of a polyester/styrene resin obtained by frontal polymerization

Abstract

The frontal polymerization technique has been successfully applied, for the first time, to obtain an unsaturated polyester/styrene resin. The effect of the ratio of the two aforementioned components, as well as of the type and amount of free-radical initiator on both front velocity and maximum temperature reached by the front, has been thoroughly studied. The resulting products have been characterized in terms of their thermal and dynamic-mechanical behaviour. A comparison of such products with the corresponding materials obtained by the classical batch polymerization technique has evidenced that frontal polymerization allows to reach a higher degree of crosslinking with respect to batch copolymerization and hence a better thermal and mechanical behaviour.