Synthesis and characterization of graft co-polymers of flax fiber with binary vinyl monomers

Grafting of flax fiber with binary vinyl monomer mixtures SLICII as methylmethacrylate (MMA)/ethyl acrylate (EA), MMA/acrylonitrile (AN), and MMA/acrylic acid (AA) was carried out. At a pressure of 8 Kg/cm(2) under optimum reaction conditions 41.74% grafting resulted. Maximum grafting (109.9%) was found with MMA+EA binary monomer mixture. Synthesized graft co-polymers were characterized with FT-IR spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), TGA/DTA techniques, and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Thermal stability of flax-g-poly(MMA/AA) was found to more than that of flax fiber and other graft co-polymers. On grafting, percentage crystallinity decreases rapidly with reduction in its stiffness and hardness. Flax fiber showed the highest value of percentage crystallinity (76.96%) and crystallinity index (0.7005) in comparison to flax-g-co-polyniers.