Preparation and Characterization of Well-defined and Polystyrene-grafted Nanocomposites via Nitroxide-mediated Radical Polymerization.

A stable free radical (2,2,6,6-tertamethylpiperidinyl-1-oxy, TEMPO) polymerization technique was applied to graft polymerization of styrene (St) onto palygorskite (PT) surface. The introduction of peroxide groups onto the PT surface was achieved by the reaction of hydrogen peroxide with chlorosilyl groups, which were introduced by the treatment of PT with thionyl chloride. The observed narrow molecular weight distributions (Mw/Mn), linear kinetic plots and linear plots of molecular weight (Mn) vs. conversion for the polymer formed indicate that the chain growth from the PT surface is a controlled process with a 'living' characteristic. The prepared PT-g-PSt hybrid nanoparticles have been extensively characterized by FT-IR, GPC, TGA, TEM, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]