Building Styrene Acrylic Emulsion

Styrene-acrylic emulsion polymers are water based polymers that can be produced from styrene and various acrylate esters such as methyl methacrylate, butyl acrylate, 2-ethylhexyl acrylate, acrylic acid, etc. By selecting the appropriate hard (ie styrene) and soft monomers, polymers with specific attributes for a variety of end-use applications can be built.

Styrene-acrylic emulsion polymers are versatile because of the building blocks and Tg that can be created. All of the different acrylic monomers can be used to build a random copolymer. Suppliers continue to develop new monomers for use by the synthetic emulsion polymers industry. Because of the wide variety of properties that can be achieved, styrene-acrylic polymer emulsions find use in every market where water-based systems are used.

Resin-supported emulsions

Resin-supported emulsions (RSE) are a unique subset of styrene-acrylic emulsion polymers. An emulsion is built on an alkali soluble resin that results in a vehicle with low MFFT relative to the polymers Tg. These products have much of the same flexibility and broad applicability as do styrene-acrylic emulsion polymers. 

Benefits:

• UV resistance
• Broad tensile/elongation balance
• Crosslinkable
• Good adhesion to common substrate