Well-Defined Water Based Acrylic Dispersions for VOC-Compliant Performance Coatings

Waterborne paint has drawn a lot of attention since it is a low hazardous and environmentally friendly coating product. In order to achieve high performance waterborne coatings, self-stabilised dispersions are desirable. A series of amphiphilic cyclopolymers with variable hydrophobic/hydrophilic balances and functionalities was developed to perform the reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) controlled surfactant-free emulsion polymerisation. All the emulsions prepared via this method exhibited very good stability, well-defined polymer particles sizes and narrow particle size distribution. Therefore, these surfactant-free emulsions are expected to be ideal candidates for many applications such as high performance coatings.