Preparation of Raspberry-Like Polymer/Silica Composite Particles through Cationic Soap-Free Emulsion Polymerization

In this paper raspberry-like composite particles were prepared via cationic soap-free emulsion polymerization with silica sol as stabilizer and 2-(methacryloyl) ethyltrimethylammonium chloride (MTC) as cationic auxiliary monomer. According to the TGA and TEM results we could find that the electrostatic attraction supplied by MTC played a vital role in the adsorption of silica particles as well as the generation of raspberry-like morphology. The silica content and appearance of composite particles were found to be improved with the increasing amount of silica sol and MTC while varied little with changes of AIBA amount.