The first products made in space - Monodisperse latex particles

Monodisperse latex particles developed by seeded emulsion polymerization on various Space Shuttle flights are analyzed. The flight hardware was composed of a monodisperse latex reactor and a support electronics package, and the particles were examined by optical microscopy and TEM. Data on the particle size distributions, larger and smaller off-size particles, and conversion-time curves for the particles are examined and compared to ground-based results. It is observed that the ground-based polymerizations have more coagulum than the flight polymerizations; the flight latex particles have narrower size distributions than the ground particles; and the number of off-size larger particles in the flight particles is smaller than in the ground data.