Diode Laser (532 nm) Induced Grafting of Polyacrylamide onto Gum Arabic

Abstract

Initiation of graft copolymerisation of acrylamide (AAm) on Gum Arabic (GA, Acacia senegal) using diode laser (532 nm) was investigated. The results showed that the optimum conditions to achieve efficient graft copolymerisation were: 60 min laser irradiation time and 0.5 gm of GA, 0.142 gm of acrylamide (monomer). The percentage of graft efficiency and percentage of graft yield were 27.40% and 97.40%, respectively. The graft copolymers were characterised using Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscope (SEM) which proved a successful production of GA-g-Acrylamide (GA-g-AAm). The results proved that copolymerisation by laser can be considered as a new, effective and clean method for producing GA-g-AAm.