EFFECT OF PARTICLE SIZE ON THE FILMING PROCESS OF POLYSTYRENE LATEX STUDIED BY AFM

The film formation process of micro-PS particles （diameter 742 nm） and nano-PS particles （diameter 29 nm） wasstudied by atomic force microscopy and differential scanning calorimetry. During a step heating process, the particles wereannealed for 0.5 h at each selected temperature. It was found that the deformation and interdiffusion temperatures of themicro-PS particles are ca. 120-130℃ and 140-150℃, that of the nano-PS particles are 90℃ and 100-110℃ respectively.The DSC traces of nano-PS particles showed that there was an exothermic peak near T;after annealing for 0.5 h at theselected temperatures below 90℃; otherwise, the exothermic peak disappeared after annealing at 100℃ or above. Comparedwith the micro-PS pedicles, the sintering process of nano-PS particles occurs at much lower temperature determined by theconfined state of polymer chains with higher conformational energy in nano-particles, and completes in a much narrowertemperature range driven mainly by the larger total surface energy.