Superabsorbent polymer with enhanced gel strength and heat resistance using itaconic acid-based oligomer

Abstract

The preparation of an itaconic acid-based oligomer and its polymerization with acrylicacid via aqueous solution copolymerization are described herein for application asnovel superabsorbent polymers (SAPs). The structure of the SAP is characterizedusing Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy. In addition, the absorptionproperties of the SAPs with various oligomer contents and degrees of monomer neu-tralization are evaluated by measuring the free absorbency, centrifuge retentioncapacity (CRC), and absorbency under load (AUL) in 0.9 wt% saline solution. Further,the gel strengths and thermal stabilities are examined via rheological thermo gravi-metric analyses. The results demonstrate that the introduction of the IA-based oligo-mer into the SAP network is improves the AUL, gel strength, and thermal stability ofthe SAP. We found the best performance of an SAP using IA-based oligomer with aCRC of 36.7 and AUL of 22.7 g/g.