Graft reaction of acrylic acid onto metallocene‐based polyethylene‐octene elastomer

Abstract In this study, grafting of acrylic acid (AA) onto metallocene‐based polyethylene‐octene elastomer (POE) was investigated by using benzoyl peroxide as an initiator. Grafted product was characterized by using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, X‐ray diffraction spectroscopy, and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Both the grafting percentage and the gel yield, at equilibrium, were higher for POE containing lower degree of comonomer content. In all cases, the crosslinking reaction was accompanied by the predominant graft reaction due to the competition of POE macroradical and excited AA. From the result of DSC and X‐ray characterizations, it was found that the change of crystallinity is slight when the gel is removed from POE‐ g ‐AA copolymers. It was also proven that the effect of gel formation on the properties of the copolymer could be neglected because of the low gel yield. So, the graft method proposed in this article can produce low gel yield copolymer. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 85: 2905–2912, 2002