Graft polymerization of acrylic monomers onto starch fractions. III. Effect of carbohydrate structure

Grafted PMMA was isolated by the acid hydrolysis method. Weight‐average and number‐average molecular weights were determined by gel permeation chromatography. The number‐average molecular weight of the grafted chains was about 475,000 for amylopectin and 403,000 for amylose. The number of grafted chains (mmol) ranged from 2.4 × 10−3 to 4.6 × 10−3 for amylopectin graft copolymers and from 2.9 × 10−3 to 6.8 × 10−3 for those of amylose. These results were related to others obtained from ceric ion consumption studies. The values suggest that amylopectin, because of its complex structure, favors a higher consumption of ceric ion in homopolymerization reactions and inhibits the initiation reactions of the copolymerization.