Reduction of surface charges during coalescence of elastomer particles

Reaction-limited aggregation of soft elastomer particles has been studied with specific attention to the fate of surface charges during coalescence. The employed system is an aqueous dispersion of fluoroelastomer particles, which are known to coalesce completely at 70 degrees C. In contrast to diffusion-limited conditions, under reaction-limited conditions the stability of the system is expected to change during aggregation because of surface reduction and charge accumulation resulting from coalescence. This allows investigating the mechanism of charge relocation during cluster coalescence. For particles stabilized by ionic surfactants, it has been found that the charges are mobile (i.e., they redistribute between aqueous solution and particle surface according to their adsorption equilibrium) (Gauer, C.; Jia, Z.; Wu, H.; Morbidelli, M. Langmuir 2009, 25, 9703). In this work, we consider the case of fixed charges, as those given by charged polymer end groups covalently bound to the particle surface. We demonstrate that a loss of fixed surface charges occurs during the coalescence and strongly affects the time evolution and the shape of the resulting cluster mass distribution.