Lattice calculations polymer pressure-volume-temperature data

Experimental data from our laboratories will be shown for an extensive series of amorphous polymers with glass transitions between Tg = 200 and 500 K. We discuss the temperature dependence of the hole-size distribution characterized by its mean and width and compare these dependencies with the hole fraction calculated from the equation of state of the Simha-Somcynsky lattice-hole theory from pressure-volume-temperature PVT) experiments [Simha and Somcynsky, 1969 Simha and Wilson, 1973 Robertson, 1992 Utracki and Simha, 2001]. The same is done for the pressure dependence of the hole free-volume. The free-volume recovery in densified, and gas-exposed polymers are discussed briefly. It is shown that the holes detected by the o-Ps probe can be considered as multivacancies of the S-S lattice. This gives us a chance to estimate reasonable values for the o-Ps hole density. Reasons for its... 

From the historical point of view and also from the number of applications in the literature, the common method is to use activity coefficients for the liquid phase, i.e., the polymer solution, and a separate equation-of-state for the solvent vapor phase, in many cases the truncated virial equation of state as for the data reduction of experimental measurements explained above. To this group of theories and models also free-volume models and lattice-fluid models will be added in this paper because they are usually applied within this approach. The approach where fugacity coefficients are calculated from one equation of state for both phases was applied to polymer solutions more recently, but it is the more promising method if one has to extrapolate over larger temperature and pressure ranges. 

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