Of polyamides

Polyesters are a second class of condensation polymers and the principles behind their synthesis parallel those of polyamides Ester formation between the functional groups of a dicarboxylic acid and a diol... 

Comparable but equally specific considerations must be applied to other condensation polymer systems. The following example is an illustration of the application of these ideas to the molecular weight of polyamides. 

The discussion of polyamides parallels that of polyesters in many ways. To begin with, polyamides may be formed from an AB monomer, in this case amino acids ... 

Table 5.4 Some Schematic Reactions for the Formation of Polyamides...

As with polyesters, the amidation reaction of acid chlorides may be carried out in solution because of the enhanced reactivity of acid chlorides compared with carboxylic acids. A technique known as interfacial polymerization has been employed for the formation of polyamides and other step-growth polymers, including polyesters, polyurethanes, and polycarbonates. In this method the polymerization is carried out at the interface between two immiscible solutions, one of which contains one of the dissolved reactants, while the second monomer is dissolved in the other. Figure 5.7 shows a polyamide film forming at the interface between an aqueous solution of a diamine layered on a solution of a diacid chloride in an organic solvent. In this form interfacial polymerization is part of the standard repertoire of chemical demonstrations. It is sometimes called the nylon rope trick because of the filament of nylon produced by withdrawing the collapsed film. 

The various mechanical properties of polyamides may be traced in many instances to the possibility of intermolecular hydrogen bonding between the polymer molecules and to the relatively stiff chains these substances possess. The latter, in turn, may be understood by considering still another equilibrium, this one among resonance structures along the chain backbone ... 

The combination of strong intermolecular forces and high chain stiffness accounts for the high melting points of polyamides through application of Eq.(4.5). 

Quality Specifications. Because of the extreme sensitivity of polyamide synthesis to impurities ia the iagredients (eg, for molecular-weight control, dye receptivity), adipic acid is one of the purest materials produced on a large scale. In addition to food-additive and polyamide specifications, other special requirements arise from the variety of other appHcations. Table 8 summarizes the more important specifications. Typical impurities iaclude monobasic acids arising from the air oxidation step ia synthesis, and lower dibasic acids and nitrogenous materials from the nitric acid oxidation step. Trace metals, water, color, and oils round out the usual specification Hsts. 

Fluorinated diacids offer a convenient method for introducing a perfluoro moiety into organic molecules. They are of potential interest in the preparation of polyamides and other fluorinated polymers. A detailed description of the perfluorocarboxyUc acids and their derivatives has been pubflshed (1), and a review article on polyfluorinated linear biflmctional compounds has appeared (35). 

Copoly(amide-imides) comprise an important class of copolyimides that have been developed into a commercial product. Incorporating the amide linkage into the PI makes the polymer more tractable than simple Pis, but involves a loss in thermal stabiUty. However, copoly(amide—imides) still possess quite good thermal stabiUties, intermediate between those of polyamides and Pis (12). They are relatively inexpensive to synthesize. 

Applications. The polyamides have important appHcations. The very high degree of polymer orientation that is achieved when Hquid crystalline solutions are extmded imparts exceptionally high strengths and moduli to polyamide fibers and films. Du Pont markets such polymers, eg, Kevlar, and Monsanto has a similar product, eg, X-500, which consists of polyamide and hydra2ide-type polymers (31) (see High performance fibers Polyamides, fibers). 

New water-insol. naphthalic acid imide dyestuffs - used to dye blends of polyamide or urethane- and polyester or tri acetate fibres having good light and washing fastness C91-110.342 RICH DE GB LI) ... 

Without other alternatives, the carboxyalkyl radicals couple to form dibasic acids HOOC(CH)2 COOH. In addition, the carboxyalkyl radical can be used for other desired radical reactions, eg, hydrogen abstraction, vinyl monomer polymerization, addition of carbon monoxide, etc. The reactions of this radical with chloride and cyanide ions are used to produce amino acids and lactams employed in the manufacture of polyamides, eg, nylon. 

However, significant exceptions to all these attributes occur. The regularity of the amide linkages along the polymer chain defines two classes of polyamides AB and AABB. 

The nomenclature (qv) of polyamides is fraught with a variety of systematic, semisystematic, and common naming systems used variously by different sources. In North America the common practice is to call type AB or type AABB polyamides nylon-x or nylon-respectively, where x refers to the number of carbon atoms between the amide nitrogens. For type AABB polyamides, the number of carbon atoms in the diamine is indicated first, followed by the number of carbon atoms in the diacid. For example, the polyamide formed from 6-aminohexanoic acid [60-32-2] is named nylon-6 [25038-54-4], that formed from 1,6-hexanediamine [124-09-4] or hexamethylenediamine and dodecanedioic acid [693-23-2] is called nylon-6,12 [24936-74-1]. In Europe, the common practice is to use the designation "polyamide," often abbreviated PA, instead of "nylon" in the name. Thus, the two examples above become PA-6 and PA-6,12, respectively. PA is the International Union of Pure and AppHed Chemistry (lUPAC) accepted abbreviation for polyamides. 

Fig. 3. Alignment of amide dipoles in polyamide crystals (a) for a two-dimensional array of an odd nylon, nylon-7, (b) for a one-dimensional array of an odd—odd nylon, nylon-5,7 (c) for one-dimensional arrays of polyamides containing even segments an even nylon, nylon-6 an even—even nylon, nylon-6,6 ...

Other Preparative Reactions. Polyamidation has been an active area of research for many years, and numerous methods have been developed for polyamide formation. The synthesis of polyamides has been extensively reviewed (54). In addition, many of the methods used to prepare simple amides are appHcable to polyamides (55,56). Polyamides of aromatic diamines and aUphatic diacids can also be made by the reaction of the corresponding aromatic diisocyanate and diacids (57). 

Phosphoric acid [7664-38-2] and its derivatives are effective catalysts for this reaction (60). Reverse alcoholysis and acidolysis can, in principle, also be used to produce polyamides, and the conversion of esters to polyamides through their reaction within diamines, reverse alcoholysis, has been demonstrated (61). In the case of reverse acidolysis, the acid by-product is usually less volatile than the diamine starting material. Thus, this route to the formation of polyamide is not likely to yield a high molecular weight polymer. 

Lewis acids, such as the haUde salts of the alkaline-earth metals, Cu(I), Cu(II), 2inc, Fe(III), aluminum, etc, are effective catalysts for this reaction (63). The ammonolysis of polyamides obtained from post-consumer waste has been used to cleave the polymer chain as the first step in a recycle process in which mixtures of nylon-6,6 and nylon-6 can be reconverted to diamine (64). The advantage of this approach Hes in the fact that both the adipamide [628-94-4] and 6-aminohexanoamide can be converted to hexarnethylenediarnine via their respective nitriles in a conventional two-step process in the presence of the diamine formed in the original ammonolysis reaction, thus avoiding a difficult and cosdy separation process. In addition, the mixture of nylon-6,6 and nylon-6 appears to react faster than does either polyamide alone. 

The resulting hexarnethylenediarnine can then be reused to produce new nylon-6,6. Impurities or contaminants from monomers of other types of polyamides can be readily removed by distillation from either the nitriles or diamine. 

In the final step the dinitrile is formed from the anti-Markovrukov addition of hydrogen cyanide [74-90-8] at atmospheric pressure and 30—150°C in the hquid phase with a Ni(0) catalyst. The principal by-product, 2-methylglutaronitrile/4j5 j5 4-ti2-, when hydrogenated using a process similar to that for the conversion of ADN to hexamethylenediamine, produces 2-meth5i-l,5-pentanediamine or 2-methylpentamethylenediamine [15520-10-2] (MPMD), which is also used in the manufacture of polyamides as a comonomer. 

Two additional aromatic monomers have become commercially available for the production of polyamides y -xylylenediamine and... 

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