Super-polystyrene: a new class of engineering plastics with versatile properties

Abstract

Many attempts to upgrade polystyrene have been made in the past. One of the last and most popular examples is the upgrading of polystyrene by stereo-controlled polymerization of styrene monomer, yielding a syndiotactic material. But the property profile of polystyrene can also be improved by stiffening the polymer chain with bulky groups. 1,1-Diphenylethylene (DPE) was selected as a monomer with such a bulky group and was copolymerized anionically with styrene to give an amorphous copolymer with a statistical chain structure which was called 'super-polystyrene'. In this paper the conditions of the anionic polymerization and the properties of the resulting materials are described. Depending on the DPE content, the glass transition temperature can be varied from 104 • C to 180 • C. Up to a DPE content of 15%, these styrene-DPE copolymers are miscible with GPPS as well as with syndiotactic polystyrene. Toughening of the transparent polymers was achieved with glass fibers and grafted rubber particles. Block copolymerization with minor amounts of butadiene yielded a tough and transparent polymer. Thermoplastic elastomers with an enhanced softening point having the block sequence S /DPE-b-Bu-b-S /DPE and S /DPE-b-EB-b-S /DPE were also prepared.

Diblock Copolymers with Similar Glass Transition Temperatures in Both Blocks for Comparing Shear Orientation Processes with DPD Computer Simulations

“…With a deeper understanding of these dynamics, the formation of macroscopically oriented domains could be optimized to form macroscopically anisotropic materials for nanoscale patterning and other technical applications . Often different properties of the polymers in BCPs are desired to tune the materials for different applications and further create new properties which are unique for BCPs, e.g., multiblock copolymers with different glass transition temperatures in the different polymer blocks as thermoplastic elastomers . There are relatively few experimental investigations on BCPs with similar dynamic characteristics in each block and parameters for these systems are hard to find.…”

“…Different glass transition temperatures for one polymer which reflect the dynamics of the polymer chain can often be found in the literature . The glass transition temperature depends on the molecular weight of the polymer, the stiffness of the polymer chain, the polymer topology, its tacticity . The T g can be further altered by plasticizers or impurities such as residual solvents .…”

“…[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] Often different properties of the polymers in BCPs are desired to tune the materials for different applications and further create new properties which are unique for BCPs, e.g., multiblock copolymers with different glass transition tempera tures in the different polymer blocks as thermoplastic elasto mers. [26,27] There are relatively few experimental investigations on BCPs with similar dynamic characteristics in each block and parameters for these systems are hard to find. The assumption of structural and dynamic symmetry, however, is often invoked in theory and simulation.There are already several experimental investigations on the orientation kinetics of DBCPs in mechanical fields, [1,[28][29][30][31][32] but the polymer systems used in these experiments did not have similar dynamics in both polymer blocks, making a compar ison to computer simulations untractable, because the simula tion times of the orientation process scales linearly with the dif ference in polymer dynamics and thus cannot be conducted in a reasonable time frame.Recent rheological studies could not answer these questions on the local reorientation processes for dynamically symmetric copolymers on the microscopic length scale.…”

“…[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] Often different properties of the polymers in BCPs are desired to tune the materials for different applications and further create new properties which are unique for BCPs, e.g., multiblock copolymers with different glass transition tempera tures in the different polymer blocks as thermoplastic elasto mers. [26,27] There are relatively few experimental investigations on BCPs with similar dynamic characteristics in each block and parameters for these systems are hard to find. The assumption of structural and dynamic symmetry, however, is often invoked in theory and simulation.…”

Preparation of functionalized precursor of SiC ceramic via hydrosilylation polymerization of 1,1-diphenylethylene derivatives

“…[7] More recently, 1,1-diphenylethylene (DPE) and its derivatives have been widely used for quantitative synthesis of the in-chain and chain-end functionalized polymers. [8] Because its special structure has remarkable steric hindrance, DPE cannot be homopolymerized with conventional chain growth polymerization method. Furthermore, functional groups can be introduced into dual phenyl rings of DPE conveniently.…”