Pulp Cellulose Fiber Modification by Grafting with Ethyl Acrylate

We report the results of an investigation on the controlled modification of cellulose fibres by grafting with a synthetic polymer. The first step was the controlled esterification of cellulose fibre surface with -bromoisobutyryl bromide (BIBB), an ATRP initiator. Ethyl acrylate (EA) was grafted-polymerised from functionalised cellulose under ATRP conditions using CuBr/tris(2-dimethyl amine ethyl)amine (Me6TREN) as the catalyst in ethyl acetate, with or without the presence of a sacrifical free radical initiator (ethyl -bromoisobutyrate). The adopted polymerisation methods allowed to control grafting degree, grafted polymer chain length and, in perspective, grafted polymer structure, namely random and block copolymers. The obtained materials were characterised by ATR/FT-IR spectroscopy, thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDXS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM)