Large-scale industrial applications of barrier films and coatings that prevent permeation of degradative gases and moisture call for the development of cost-efficient and ecofriendly polymer nanocomposites. Herein, we report the facile fabrication of latex nanocomposites (LNCs) by incorporating surface-modified graphene oxide (mGO) at various loadings (0.025-1.2 wt %) into a styrene-acrylic latex using water as the processing solvent. LNCs fabricated with mGO exhibited significant reductions (up to 67%) in water vapor sorption, resulting in greater environmental stability when compared to LNCs fabricated with equivalent loading of hydrophilic, unmodified GO. The assembly and coalescence of the exfoliated latex/mGO dispersions during the film formation process produced highly dispersed and well-ordered mGO domains with high aspect ratios, where alignment and overlap of the mGO domains improved with increasing mGO content. The addition of only 0.7 vol % (1.2 wt %) mGO led to an 84% decrease (relative to the neat polymer latex film) in oxygen permeability of the LNC films, an excellent barrier performance attributed to the observed LNC film morphologies. This work enables ecofriendly development of mechanically flexible mGO/LNC films with superior barrier properties for many industrial applications including protective coatings, food packaging, and biomedical products.

Polymer latex particles were synthesized with multilayer core-shell structure via surface cross-linking emulsion polymerization. The latex core is coated with a five-layer shell. The polymerization was done in a semicontinuous fashion monitored by a dynamic laser scattering (DLS). The copolymer in each layer is designed with alternating high and low glass transition temperature (T(g)). Divinylbenzene (DVB) was added as the cross-linking agent in the synthesis of the "hard" layers to prevent the molecular diffusion from the adjacent "soft" layers. The layer-by-layer increment on the latex core is proved by the alternating changes on the film-formation capabilities of different latex emulsions at room temperature in correspondence with the variance in the T(g) of the outermost polymer layer. The detailed morphologies of the films formed by the latex with different number of layers were characterized by atom force microscopy (AFM). The deformation of the latex particles is largely depended on the nature of the polymer in the outermost layer of the latex particles. Further characterization carried out by multifrequency temperature-modulated differential scanning calorimetry (TOPEM-DSC) confirmed the layer-by-layer structure of the particles, although the molecular redistribution and the interlayer structures were observed. The work provides a routine toward the synthesis of multilayer polymer latexes.