Preparation of Polystyrene Spheres Using Surfactant-Free Emulsion Polymerization

Abstract

Polystyrene spheres have been synthesized using potassium persulphate (KPS) as initiators without using anysurfactant or stabilizing agent. Simple mixing method was used to synthesize styrene monomer into polystyrenespheres. The influences of mixing time, ammount of styrene monomers, and ammount of initiators were studiedin this research. Size measurement and its distribution were analyzed by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM).Monodisperse spheres and verry narrow size distribution are expected in this research. The results showed thatthe most optimum time to synthesize styrene monomer into polystyrene latex is 6 hours, where biggest and mostuniform spheres size were obtained. Meanwhile when ammount of styrene monomers were increased, thediameter of polystyrene spheres were also increased. The biggest and most uniform polystyrene spheres diameterwas shown by 14% volume ratio of styrene monomer. For initiators influence, the smaller diameter ofpolystyrene spheres were obtained for 0.2 gram KPS than in 0.05 gram KPS. Polystyrene spheres using 0.05gram KPS also has more uniform size than in 0.2 gram.