A comparison of the characteristics of poly(vinyl acetate) latex with high solid content made by emulsion and semi-continuous microemulsion polymerization

A method to produce poly(vinyl acetate) lattices with high-solid content (ca. 30 wt.%) without losing the characteristics of the microemulsion-made particles is presented. The method is based on the multi-stage addition of monomer to a latex produced by the polymerization of 3 wt.% vinyl acetate in three-component microemulsions stabilized with low concentrations (<1 wt.%) of the anionic surfactant, Aerosol OT, to produce lattices with up to 30 wt% solids. The results demonstrated that the poly(vinyl acetate) in the high solid-content latex has much smaller molar masses than the poly(vinyl acetate) in emulsion-made lattices with similar solid content. Also the microemulsion-made lattices contain particles two- to three-fold smaller than those obtained by emulsion polymerization.