Vinylbenzyl ethers of cellulose. Preparation and polymerization

Abstract

Grafting of chain-growth polymerizable monomers onto cellulose has been a thoroughly investigated area. Introduction of polymerizable monomeric species chemically bound to cellulose has been less fruitful. Crotonate esters, methacrylate esters, and allyl and vinyl derivatives are examples where subsequent polymerization to crosslinked species has been described. Reported are the reactions of vinylbenzyl chloride with causticized cotton fabric to give a series of vinylbenzylated celluloses with degrees of substitution from 0.05 to 0.26. Homopolymerization of these or copolymerization with maleic anhydride or dimethyl maleate gave little or no crosslinking under the conditions employed. Vinylbenzyl cellulose acetate proved to be a polymerizable “prepolymer” with diethyl maleate.