Since the launching of tertiary oil recovery, the performance requirements of polymer solution increasing, the polymer solution is more difficult to meet the needs of the scene. It could solve poor profile control, salt-tolerant, and poor performance that crosslinking agent was added to polymer solution. Therefore, chromium acetate crosslinker was synthesized, and the synthesis conditions were optimized, and the performance of crosslinking agent was evaluated. Through optimization, the optimum conditions of chromium acetate synthesis was: reaction time 10 h, reaction temperature 80 degrees C, the molar ratio of acetic acid and potassium dichromate than or equal to 24 : 1. Performance evaluation showed that adding crosslinking agent could significantly increase the viscosity of the polymer solution, could significantly improve the resistance coefficient and residual resistance of the polymer solution, and could play a good role profile flooding. Studies showed that when salinity and ion content changed, the crosslinking mechanism of changed. Through the study of molecule coil size at room temperature, the molecule coil size would slightly decline after 1 h, suggesting that crosslinking mechanism was intramolecular crosslinking reaction occurs at first, and then intermolecular crosslinking reaction. (C) 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2012