Novel synthetic pathway for associative polymers

In this paper studies on the preparation of novel anionic amphiphilic polyelectrolytes are presented. The originality of the synthetic route results from employing an a-olefine with more than 8 C-atoms, i.e. a-dodecene, DD, as comonomer in a radical terpolymerization with maleic anhydride, MAn, and acrylic acid, AA, or vinyl isobutyl ether, ViBE. In two series differing by the use of either AA or ViBE, resp., copolymers were prepared with increasing amounts of the hydrophobic DD comonomer. Up to 1 mol-% of DD in the feed all the terpolymers obtained proved to be water-soluble. Beyond that value gels were yielded suitable to absorb oils. The terpolymers when submitted to viscometric investigations displayed behaviour characteristic for amphiphilics. Even at high ionic strenght, provided by 1M NaCl no straigh-line relationships hred vs. c could be obtained what was not the case with the respective bipolymers, i.e. poly(MAn-co-AA) and poly(MAn-co-ViBE).