Polymer Surfactants And Their Applications

Characteristic function of polymer surfactant

1. Surface tension

Because the hydrophilic and hydrophobic chain segments of polymer surfactants have certain orientation between the surface or interface, they have the ability to reduce the surface tension and interfacial tension, but often the surface activity is worse than that of low molecules.

The ability of polymer surfactants to reduce the surface tension is not as good as that of low molecular weight surfactants, and the surface activity decreases sharply with the increase of molecular weight.

2. Emulsification and dispersion function

Despite the high molecular weight, there are many polymer surface activity can form micelles in the dispersed phase, and has a CMC value, play the emulsification function, because of the amphiphilic structure, part of the molecule can be adsorbed on the surface of the particle, the other part is dissolved in the dispersion medium as a continuous phase, when the molecular weight of the polymer is not too high, it has a steric hindrance effect. A barrier is created on the surface of monomer droplets or polymer particles, preventing them from associating to produce condensation.

3, cohesion function

When the molecular weight of the polymer surfactant is very high, it is adsorbed on many particles, and Bridges are generated between the particles to form flocculants and play the role of flocculants.

4. Other functions

Many polymer surfactants themselves foaming force is not very good, but the water retention is strong, foam stability is excellent, because of the high molecular weight of polymer surfactants, so it has the ensuing film formation and adhesion and other excellent properties.

5, solution performance

The behavior of molecular surfactants in selective solvents: polymer surfactants are mostly amphiphilic blocks and grafted copolymers. In selective solvents, their solution properties are more complex than small molecules or homopolymers. The characteristics of molecular structure, the length ratio of amphiphilic chain segments, the composition of components and the properties of solvents have a greater impact on their solution morphology. Amphiphilic polymers, like low molecular surfactants, adsorb hydrophobic groups on the surface to reduce the surface tension, and at the same time, synthesize micelles in the solution.