Effect of surfactant on the swelling of polymeric nanoparticles: toward a generalized approach

Tauer et al. (Colloid Polym Sci 278:814-820, 2000) claim that the well-known Morton-Kaizerman-Altier (MKA) equation fails to describe experimental swelling data of polystyrene particles with toluene in the absence of free or adsorbed surfactant. They made modifications to the MKA equation to fit their own data; however, they were not able to fit the MKA data obtained in the presence of surfactant. In this work, based on the modified MKA equation, we propose a new approach to take into account the effect of surfactant on the swelling behavior of polymer latex particles such that with only one set of parameters, it is possible to fit the Tauer et al. data and to predict the MKA data. Comparisons of model against experimental data in presence and absence of surfactant are showed and discussed.