Monomer sequence

This tendency is related to the polarization properties of the monomer substituents (42). Monomers that are dissimilar in polarity tend to form alternating monomer sequences in the polymer chain. An example is the monomer pair acrylonitrile—styrene. Styrene, with its pendent phenyl group, has a relatively electronegative double bond whereas acrylonitrile, with its electron-withdrawing nitrile group, tends to be electropositive. 

The living polymerization process offers enormous flexibiUty in the design of polymers (40). It is possible to control terminal functional groups, pendant groups, monomer sequencing along the main chain (including the order of addition and blockiness), steric stmcture, and spatial shape. 

Although reactivity ratios indicate that VP is the more reactive monomer, reaction conditions such as solvent polarity, initiator type, percent conversion, and molecular weight of the growing radical can alter these ratios (138). Therefore, depending on polymerization conditions, copolymers produced by one manufacturer may not be identical to those of another, especially if the end use appHcation of the resin is sensitive to monomer sequence distribution and MWD. 

Crystallinity in ECH and ECH—EO finished products increases over time, and may be detected by x-ray analysis or differential scanning calorimetry. In synthesizing ECH—EO, the process is designed to maximize random monomer sequence and minimize crystallinity. The ECH—EO molecular ratio in these products ranges from approximately 3 1 to 1 1. 

Any understanding of the kinetics of copolymerization and the structure of copolymers requires a knowledge of the dependence of the initiation, propagation and termination reactions on the chain composition, the nature of the monomers and radicals, and the polymerization medium. This section is principally concerned with propagation and the effects of monomer reactivity on composition and monomer sequence distribution. The influence of solvent and complcxing agents on copolymerization is dealt with in more detail in Section 8.3.1. 

Tire simplest model for describing binary copolyinerization of two monomers, Ma and Mr, is the terminal model. The model has been applied to a vast number of systems and, in most cases, appears to give an adequate description of the overall copolymer composition at least for low conversions. The limitations of the terminal model generally only become obvious when attempting to describe the monomer sequence distribution or the polymerization kinetics. Even though the terminal model does not always provide an accurate description of the copolymerization process, it remains useful for making qualitative predictions, as a starting point for parameter estimation and it is simple to apply. 

In traditional treatments of copolymerizaiion kinetics, the values of the ratios sA and % are implicitly set equal to unity (Section 7.3.1.2.2). Since they contain no terms from cross propagation, these parameters have no direct influence on either the overall copolymer composition or the monomer sequence distribution they only influence the rate of polymerization. 

Cases have been reported where the application of the penultimate model provides a significantly better fit to experimental composition or monomer sequence distribution data. In these copolymerizations raab "bab and/or C BA rBBA- These include many copolymerizations of AN, 4 26 B,"7 MAH28" 5 and VC.30 In these cases, there is no doubt that the penultimate model (or some scheme other than the terminal model) is required. These systems arc said to show an explicit penultimate effect. In binary copolynierizations where the explicit penultimate model applies there may be between zero and three azeotropic compositions depending on the values of the reactivity ratios.31... 

Expressions for predicting monomer sequence distribution with higher order models and for monomer complex and other models have also been proposed. 

Methods for evaluation of reactivity ratios comprise a significant proportion of the literature on copolymerization. There are two basic types of information that can be analyzed to yield reactivity ratios. These are (a) copolymer composition/convcrsion data (Section 7.3.3.1) and (b) the monomer sequence distribution (Section 7.3.3.2). The methods used to analyze these data are summarized in the following sections. 

NMR spectroscopy has made possible the characterization of copolymers in terms of their monomer sequence distribution. The area has been reviewed by Randall,100 Bovey,139 Tonelli,101 Hatada140 and others. Information on monomer sequence distribution is substantially more powerful than simple composition data with respect to model discrimination,25,49 Although many authors have used the distribution of triad fractions to confirm the adequacy or otherwise of various models, only a few25 58,141 have used dyad or triad fractions to calculate reactivity ratios directly. 

Another serious problem in applying these methods is that unambiguous assignments of N VIR signals to monomer sequences are, as yet, only available for a few systems. Moreover, assignments are complicated by the fact that the sensitivity of chemical shifts to tacticity may be equal or greater than their... 

The solvent in a bulk copolymerization comprises the monomers. The nature of the solvent will necessarily change with conversion from monomers to a mixture of monomers and polymers, and, in most cases, the ratio of monomers in the feed will also vary with conversion. For S-AN copolymerization, since the reactivity ratios are different in toluene and in acetonitrile, we should anticipate that the reactivity ratios are different in bulk copolymerizations when the monomer mix is either mostly AN or mostly S. This calls into question the usual method of measuring reactivity ratios by examining the copolymer composition for various monomer feed compositions at very low monomer conversion. We can note that reactivity ratios can be estimated for a single monomer feed composition by analyzing the monomer sequence distribution. Analysis of the dependence of reactivity ratios determined in this manner of monomer feed ratio should therefore provide evidence for solvent effects. These considerations should not be ignored in solution polymerization either. 

Harwood112 proposed that the solvent need not directly affect monomer reactivity, rather it may influence the way the polymer chain is solvated. Evidence for the proposal was the finding for certain copolymerizations, while the terminal model reactivity ratios appear solvent dependent, copolymers of the same overall composition had the same monomer sequence distribution. This was explained in... 

A general purpose program has been developed for the analysis of NMR spectra of polymers. A database contains the peak assignments, stereosequence names for homopolymers or monomer sequence names for copolymers, and intensities are analyzed automatically in terms of Bernoullian or Markov statistical propagation models. A calculated spectrum is compared with the experimental spectrum until optimized probabilities, for addition of the next polymer unit, that are associated with the statistical model are produced. 

Stereosequence in homopolymers and monomer sequence in copolymers will influence the mechanical and physical properties of the polymer. 

The program will be demonstrated with poly(vinyl alcohol) for tacticity analysis and with copolymer vinylidene chloride isobutylene for monomer sequence analysis. Peak assignments in C-13 spectra were obtained independently by two-dimensional NMR techniques. In some cases, assignments have been extended to longer sequences and confirmed via simulation of the experimental data. Experimental and "best-fit" simulated spectra will be compared. 

Recently, Teymour and coworkers developed an interesting computational technique called the digital encoding for copolymerization compositional modeling [20,21], Their method uses symbolic binary arithmetic to represent the architecture of a copolymer chain. Here, each binary number describes the exact monomer sequence on a specific polymer chain, and its decimal equivalent is a unique identifier for this chain. Teymour et al. claim that the... 

Monomer sequence length distribution and penultimate effect in ethylenc-cycloolefln copolymers synthesized over homogeneous metallocene catalysts... 

In analysis of homopolymers the critical interpretation problems are calibration of retention time for molecular weight and allowance for the imperfect re >lution of the GPC. In copolymer analysis these interpretation problems remain but are ven added dimensions by the simultaneous presence of molecular weight distribution, copolymer composition distribution and monomer sequence length distribution. Since, the GPC usu y separates on the basis of "molecular size" in solution and not on the basB of any one of these particular properties, this means that at any retention time there can be distributions of all three. The usual GPC chromatogram then represents a r onse to the concentration of some avera of e h of these properties at each retention time. 

NMR Polymer type, monomer sequence and ratio, isomeric nature... 

In what follows, we use simple mean-field theories to predict polymer phase diagrams and then use numerical simulations to study the kinetics of polymer crystallization behaviors and the morphologies of the resulting polymer crystals. More specifically, in the molecular driving forces for the crystallization of statistical copolymers, the distinction of comonomer sequences from monomer sequences can be represented by the absence (presence) of parallel attractions. We also devote considerable attention to the study of the free-energy landscape of single-chain homopolymer crystallites. For readers interested in the computational techniques that we used, we provide a detailed description in the Appendix. ... 

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