Transparent PMMA films toughened via in-situ solution copolymerization for potential application as protective film in polarizer

In this work, free radical solution polymerization was used to prepare polymeric nanocomposite films by copolymerization of flexible butyl acrylate (BA) monomer and modified nano−silica with methyl acrylate (MMA) monomer. Our findings showed that the addition of BA monomer and nano−silica had limited effect on the transmittance of PMMA films, and the transmittance could achieve as high as 93%. Perfect overall properties of the as−prepared films (with a tensile strength of 36 MPa and an elongation at break of 42%) could be achieved when the monomer MMA:BA was set as 6:2 at a nano−silica content of 20 wt%. The PMMA−based nanocomposite films prepared in this work possessed excellent transparency, desired toughness and good hydrophobicity, which made them potentially promising for the applications as protective films for polarizing films.