Polysulfones are useful engineering plastics which have key properties such as thermal stability, good mechanical properties and easy processability in the melt state or in solution. The thermal and electro-optic properties are of particular interesti...
Polysulfones are useful engineering plastics which have key properties such as thermal stability, good mechanical properties and easy processability in the melt state or in solution. The thermal and electro-optic properties are of particular interesting for the processing as well as dielectric applications. This thesis describes how to effectively control the glass transition temperature in aromatic polysulfonic copolymer system and elucidate the structure-property relationship according to their chemical structure and morphology.
At first, a series of random copolysulfones were synthesized using 6 different kinds of aromatic diol monomers such as DHDPS(dihydroxydi phenylsulfone), resorcinol, catechol, 1,7-dihydroxynaphthalene, 2,7-dihydroxy naphthalene and bisphenol-A. The composition of copolymers was easily controlled by varying the molar ratio of two different kinds of diol monomer. All the polymers were characterized through NMR, FT-IR and elemental analysis to ensure that macromolecular chain had the expected composition from stoichiometric calculation. The copolymers were also characterized through differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) to asses their glass transition temperature (Tg). To get a better understanding the relationship between Tg and composition of random copolymers, we adopted the concept of PRCL (percentage of rigid chain length), which was defined as the ratio between the rigid length (each projected length weighted by its attributed rigidity: 0% for ether and 100% for phenyl and sulfone) and the full projected length of the repeat unit. Through a slight modification that included the concept of copolymer composition, we could get a linear relationship between PRCL and Tg for copolysulfones, where the correlation coefficient(R2) is 0.984. The prediction of Tg of a series of copolymers by defining PRCL suggested the important roles of the chain mobility during glass transition. In addition, by using linear equation, we could easily choice the composition of copolymer for the appropriate application.
Secondly, the synthetic procedure for the diol monomers, 2',5'-bis(alkyloxy) -p-terphenyl-4,4"-diol, was carried out and their utility was confirmed by varying carbon numbers (n=1, 4, 8, 12, 16) of alkyloxy group. The monomeric diols were polymerized by chlorine substitution reaction with DCDPS (dichlorodiphenylsulfone) and resultants were confirmed by spectroscopic means as well as elemental analysis. The thermal behavior of the polymers was evaluated by DSC and TGA. Generally, the Tgs of polysulfones highly depended on the length of side chain length. The Tgs of given series were in the range of 32~214℃.
An attempt was made to evaluate the morphology of polymers by means of X-ray diffraction experiment in a transmission mode. It is obvious from the increase of the scattering intensity that the internal order of the polysulfone was improved with increasing side chain length. Also, the maxima in the diffractogram were shifted to a smaller 2θ, which means larger internal dimensions. In completely amorphous polysulfone having side chains, the resulting layer periods d in angstroms are plotted versus the number of carbon atoms in the alkyloxy side chain. A linear dependency was found and its slope was 0.77. The increment per methylene (CH2) unit, 0.77Å is much smaller than the theoretical value of 1.27Å calculated from the fully extended and all-trans conformation of alkyl group. From these facts, it is thought that the polysulfones prepared have loose-layered structures.
Another electronic properties such as dielectric constant and refractive index were investigated. The dielectric constant was in the range of 2.72~3.86, highly depending on the side chain length.