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7754382 
Journal Article 
Preparation and characterization of conducting polymer-coated thermally expandable microspheres 
Chen, S; Sun, Z; Li, L; Xiao, Y; Yu, Y 
2017 
Chinese Chemical Letters
ISSN: 1001-8417
EISSN: 1878-5964 
Elsevier B.V. 
28 
658-662 
English 
The thermally expandable microspheres (TEMs) were prepared via suspension polymerization with acrylonitrile (AN), methyl methacrylate (MMA) and methyl acrylate (MA) as monomers and n-hexane as the blowing agent. Meanwhile, a novel type of functional and conductive thermal expandable microsphere was obtained through strongly covering the surface of microsphere by conductive polymers with the mass loading of 1.5%. The optimal conditions to prepare high foaming ratio and equally distributed microcapsules were investigated with AN-MMA-MA in the proportion of 70%/20%/10% (m/m/m), and 25 wt% of n-hexane in oil phase. The further investigation results showed that the unexpanded TEMs were about 30 μm in diameter and the maximum expansion ratio was nearly 125 times of original volume. The polypyrrole (PPy) was smoothly coated on the surface of the TEMs and the expansion property of PPy-coated TEMs was almost the same as the uncoated TEMs. Moreover, the structure and expanding performance of TEMs and PPy-coated TEMs were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), laser particle size analyzer and dilatometer (DIL). © 2016 Zhi-Cheng Sun, Yan-Min Yu 
Thermally expandable microspheres; Suspension polymerization; Conducting polymer; Preparation; Characterization; Particle size