Functional polymers and capsules for innovative paper products

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Creating innovative paper products with unique properties is one of the best approaches to address the challenges of maintaining a healthy and growing papermaking industry in Canada. A range of novel cationic polymers/capsules with tailored structures will be developed, and used as functional additives for various value-added specialty paper products or enhancing the performance of existing paper products. The application can also be extended to other areas like biomaterials and environmental remediation. The proposed research consists of three projects: 1) tailor-modified cationic-polyvinyl alcohol (PVA); 2) nanocapsule-based star polymers with functional-modified arms; 3) responsive nanocapsules and functional mesoporous microparticles. The functional groups, pendant chains and agents will be incorporated into polymers/capsules via various state-of-art techniques, including living-free radical polymerization, copolymerization, post-grafting and controllable loading. Those polymerization techniques enable us to prepare the polymers with tuneable properties by manipulating the parameters such as arm composition/numbers and pendant chain lengths, and to synthesize the pH-responsive nanocapsules with reversible loading and release of functional agents. Due to cationic and water-soluble or dispersible nature, the polymers/capsules will be well retained with cellulose fibres after being added at the wet-end of papermaking, thus facilitating their application. The establishment of structure-property relation for functional additives from a fundamental point of view will provide a guide for further macromolecular design. Part of the novelty of star polymers relies on the synergy between functional chains and agents loaded. Apart from disinfectant and antifungi polymers, specialty dye or fluorescent probes could also be controllably loaded and released, thus expanding the application from antifungi packaging to other types (e.g., security paper). Meanwhile, the cationic-PVA with well-defined chain architectures will improve our fundamental understanding of the interaction (adsorption and penetration) of polymers with cellulose fibres, and potentially reduce the energy required in pulp refining processes.