In this research, photoinitiated dispersion polymerization technique was chosen in the

production of precursor polymer particles due to it suitable for the synthesizing the crosslinked
polymer particles. Besides that, there are great interest in implement this technique where it is
facile, short reaction time, conducted at room temperature, low cost and also green for the
environment. In this study, types of monomer, types of photoinitiator, reaction times, amount of
crosslinker, concentration of monomer and amount of photoinitiator were studied.

In term of type of monomer, poly(styrene-co-EGDMA-co-VBC) produced better quality

compared to poly(MMA-co-EGDMA-co-VBC). However, poly(MMA-co-EGDMA-co-VBC)
produced higher yield compared to poly(styrene-co-EGDMA-co-VBC). On this regard,
poly(MMA-co-EGDMA-co-VBC) was chosen to investigate further. Changing in
photoinitiators managed to improve the quality and size of poly(MMA-co-EGDMA-co-
VBC) particles, but slightly decreased in yield. Besides that, changing Darocur 4265 to
Irgacure 819 only give small increment in terms of yield and quality of the final product due
to the rapid decomposition of photoinitiator. At 6 hours reaction, good quality, narrow
particle size distribution and moderate yield of poly(MMA-co-EGDMA-co-VBC) particles
were obtained, however increasing reaction times caused the quality of polymer particles
decreased due to lack of stabilizer as the reaction continued. In addition, no significant
increasing in particle size when the reaction was allow at longer reaction time. In all cases,
FTIR spectra showed all the functional groups have successfully attached to the polymeric
backbone. However, in all cases, polydispersity of particles still observed. Hence, further
study is recommended to increase the monodispersity of the particles produced via
photoinitiated dispersion polymerization.

To study the interaction of four factor (EGDMA, VBC, photoinitiator and reaction
times), full factorial design were used. Based on ANOVA result, the most significant
parameter was reaction times followed by amount of photoinitiator, amount of EGDMA and
amount of VBC. Therefore, to obtain the highest yield of polymer particles, the most
significant parameter should be used at the highest levels. The model generated from
ANOVA showed significant and R2 value more than 0.85, thus showed that the model can be
used as the prediction for a process. However, for further optimization, certain
considerations must be considered. To prepare the precursor for hypercrosslinking reaction,
high amount of VBC was compulsory coupled with the lowest possible of EGDMA amount
to allow the precursor to swell during the initial stages of hypercrosslinking reaction. Thus,
for optimization part, three parameters were used which were amout of EGDMA, amount of
VBC and amount of photoinitiator. As a result of the optimization work performed, the
optimized precursor particles were obtained which contains high amount of chlorine (60 wt
% VBC), not very crosslink (70 wt% EGDMA) and high yield (79.78%).