Commercial production of Ryton®, the engineering plastic poly(phenylene sulfide) or (PPS), began in 1973 by Phillips Petroleum Company. Phillips used 1 the process disclosed in 1967 by Edmonds and Hill, i.e., the reaction of 1,4-dichlorobenzene with sodium sulfide in a polar organic solvent to produce PPS. This was the first practical preparation of PPS of sufficiently high molecular weight to be useable. The patent literature is now voluminous. An excellent comprehensive review article on the properties, fabrication, and 2 uses of PPS was published by Hill and Brady. This paper is a brief overview of the preparation and properties of PPS and is not intended to be a comprehensive review.
PREPARATIONMuch information on the process to prepare PPS from 1,4-dichlorobenzene and sodium sulfide is proprietary and the process is not as easy as it looks.Sodium sulfide hydrate or a mixture of aqueous sodium hydrosulfide and sodium hydroxide is dissolved in a polar organic solvent such as N-methylpyrrolidone and the system dehydrated. Then 1,4-dichlorobenzene is added and the system held at 200 to 300°C until polymerization is complete, usually within ten hours. Two moles of sodium chloride are formed for every mole of PPS, and the weight of sodium chloride formed is greater than the theoretical yield of 173 B. M. Culbertson et al. (eds.), Advances in Polymer Synthesis
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