Studies in Microcellular Polymer Foams, Produced by Copolymerization

Acrylate foams have been used extensively in the fabrication of target components for laser experiments. Acrylates are efficient systems especially for photoinitiation processes, however, at very low-density range these foams are not very strong and tend to be fragile. A method for the production of foams produced by free radical co-polymerization of some selected pairs of monomers is described in this paper. Foams produced by the co-polymerization of some pairs of monomers have increased the strength significantly at lower density range. Specifically, the use of 1,1’-(Methylenedi-4,1-phenylene) bis maleimide in the co-polymerization has proved very successful. This study also describes the effect of solvents on foam densities.