Abstract: Cationic polyacrylamide P(AM/MAPD) was prepared by the radical copolymerization of acrylamide(AM) and 1-methacryloyloxypropyl-3-decylimidazolium chloride(MAPD-Cl). The as-synthesized product was characterized by IR and proved to be the target product. Synthetic conditions were optimized with the single factor optimization coupled with the response surface methodology(RSM). Based on the results of single factor optimization, mass fraction of monomer, reaction temperature, initiator concentration, and time were obtained and compared with those using RSM method. A mathematic model of the intrinsic viscosity of the polymer was established，and the optimized conditions are as follows: 25.41% of mass fraction of monomer, 0.03% of mass fraction of initiator (NaHSO3-(NH4)2S2O4), 26.43 ℃ reaction temperature, 10 h reaction time. In addition, the intrinsic viscosity for polymer is 12.56 dL/g.

Key words: cationic polyacrylamide, intrinsic viscosity, redox initiator, response surface analysis