Synthesis and characterization of C60‐based composites of amphiphilic N‐vinylpyrrolidone/triethylene glycol dimethacrylate copolymers

It was found that under mixing of aqueous solutions of copolymers and toluene solutions of C60 two types of polymer composites can be produced with different matrix structure, the fullerene content and an aggregation degree. The dimethacrylate enriched macromolecules migrate to toluene and the VP units enriched copolymer chains remain in water to form copolymer micelles and their aggregates in these media that solubilize and encapsulate the fullerene. The structure and properties of obtained polymer composites were studied by GPC with dual detection (RI and MALLS), FT-IR, WAXS and SAXS methods. It is shown that in a composite based on N-vinylpyrrolidone copolymer isolated from toluene the fullerene form larger particles, compare to that isolated from water. According to SAXS, the fullerene particles in a solid copolymer are organized in spherical objects with fine coil-like structure. The stability of the composites in water, ethanol, and chloroform was shown to depend on the original polymer matrix structure and on copolymer/fullerene ratio. POLYM. COMPOS., 35:1362–1371, 2014. V C 2013 Society of Plastics Engineers