Preparing Antibacterial Nano-Polymer Microspheres By Soap-Free Emulsion Polymerization

Antimicrobial polymer microspheres is a kind of microsphere with its surface chemical bonding antibacterial group, which gives the microsphere antibacterial properties. It, that antibacterial group is chemically bonded in the substrate surface, will improve the poor antibacterial durability due to the release of the small molecule antimicrobial agent and the environmental problem due to the residues of the small molecule antimicrobial agent. Furthermore, the density of the antibacterial group in the microsphere's surface is more than the corresponding small molecule antimicrobial agent, which can integrate with micro-organisms more easily and improve the antibacterial effect. Therefore, antimicrobial polymer microspheres have good potential for application in the areas related to biomedical, environmental protection, and water treatment. Reported by literature, it need two stage, the preparation of polymer microsphere and the surface modification of polymer microsphere, for preparation of the antimicrobial polymer microsphere, and so the process is complex. Though antimicrobial polymer microsphere can be prepared by one stage suspension copolymerization, the existence of dispersing agent will affect the application of the microsphere in some areas. In this paper, antimicrobial polymer microsphere is prepared by one stage soap-free emulsion copolymerization. The latex prepared by soap-free emulsion polymerization have clean surface, small and uniform size, core-shell structure and excellent antibacterial properties. Major work are as follows:1. Synthesized and characterized surfactant monomer with antibacterial groups, Viologen and DMAEMA-C₆, as literature.2. Prepared antimicrobial polymer microsphere by soap-free emulsion polymerization in the presence of functional monomer synthesized by 1. And characterized their morphology by electron microscopy, characterized their shell composition by XPS, characterized their size and distribution by electron microscopy and particle size analysis instrument.3. Centrifuged separation the emulsion and dried the latex, then tested its antibacterial properties.