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• Hall, H
• Ahad, S
• Bates, R
• Bertucci, M
• Contreras, C
• Dospinoiu, A
• Lin, G
• Singletary, N
• Somogyi, A
• [+] on Google Scholar
• Hall, H
• Ahad, S
• Bates, R
• Bertucci, M
• Contreras, C
• Dospinoiu, A
• Lin, G
• Singletary, N
• Somogyi, A
• [+] on PubMed
• Hall, H
• Ahad, S
• Bates, R
• Bertucci, M
• Contreras, C
• Dospinoiu, A
• Lin, G
• Singletary, N
• Somogyi, A

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Polymers 2011, 3(1), 367-387; doi:10.3390/polym3010367

Article

Structural Analysis of Aromatic Liquid Crystalline Polyesters

Henry Hall ^1,* , Samiul Ahad ¹ , Robert Bates ¹ , Maria Bertucci ² , Cristina Contreras ¹ , Alexandru Dospinoiu ¹ , Guangxin Lin ¹ , Nancy Singletary ²  and Arpad Somogyi ¹

¹ Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Arizona, 1306 E University Blvd, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA ² Solvay Advanced Polymers, 4500 McGinnis Ferry Rd., Alpharetta, GA 30005, USA

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Received: 21 December 2010; in revised form: 13 January 2011 / Accepted: 20 January 2011 / Published: 27 January 2011

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Liquid Crystalline Polymers)

Download PDF Full-Text [665 KB, uploaded 27 January 2011 15:39 CET]

Abstract: Laboratory preparations of liquid crystalline prepolymers, distillates accompanying prepolymers, final polymers, and sublimates accompanying final polymers were examined. NaOD/D₂O depolymerization of prepolymers and polymers back to monomers with integration of the ¹H NMR spectra showed up to 6% excess of carboxyls over phenol groups, caused partly by loss of the low-boiling comonomer hydroquinone through distillation during prepolymerization and leaving anhydride units in the polymer chain. ESI⁻ MS and MS/MS of hexafluoroisopropanol extracts of the prepolymer detected small molecules including some containing anhydride groups; ESI⁺ MS showed the presence of small cyclic oligomers. ¹H NMR (including TOCSY) spectra provided more quantitative analyses of these oligomers. The final polymerization increases the length of the polymer chains and sublimes out the small oligomers. Anhydride linkages remaining in the polymer must make LCP’s more susceptible to degradation by nucleophilic reagents such as water, alkalis, and amines.

Keywords: copolymerization; LCP’s; mass spectrometry; NMR; polyesters

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