Styrene-assisted free radical grafting of glycidyl methacrylate onto polyethylene in the melt

Glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) is a very useful monomer as it bears an epoxy group which is capable of reacting with various other functional groups. However, its melt free radical grafting reactivity onto a polymer backbone is low. In this study, we show that the use of styrene (St) as a comonomer greatly promotes both GMA's grafting yield and grafting rate onto polyethylene (PE). It is proposed that, in the presence of St, the dominant mechanism of the free radical grafting of GMA onto PE is that St reacts first with PE secondary macroradicals and the resulting styryl macroradicals then copolymerize with GMA leading to grafted GMA. We also show that the contribution of St is not related to an improved solubility of GMA in the molten PE.