Polymerization mechanism of poly(ethylene glycol dimethacrylate) fragrance nanocapsules

Abstract

In this paper, a pseudo-ternary phase diagram was drawn according to the phase separation theory to decide if O/W capsules can be formed by using poly(ethylene glycol dimethacrylate) as shell material and fragrance dementholized peppermint oil as model core material. Within a certain ratio range of reaction reagents, the nanocapsule was first synthesized by the precipitation of crosslinking agent on the surface of a nanoemulsion. The encapsulation efficiency of dementholized peppermint oil in the nanocapsules was above 86.3%, the average diameter was 261 nm, the particle size distribution was 0.195 and the final conversion rate of ethylene glycol dimethacrylate reached up to 92%. It was also demonstrated that the nanocapsules' sizes can be tuned by the number of carbons in the polyol dimethyl acrylate.