Microwave syntheses of poly(ε-caprolactam-co-ε-caprolactone)

✍ Scribed by Xiaomei Fang; Ronald Hutcheon; Daniel A. Scola

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 248 KB
• Volume: 38
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0887-624X
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0518(20000415)38:8<1379::aid-pola22>3.0.co;2-f

✦ Synopsis

Microwave irradiation was applied to synthesize poly(-caprolactam-co-caprolactone) directly from the anionic catalyzed ring opening of two cyclic monomers, -caprolactam and -caprolactone using a variable frequency microwave furnace, programmed to a set temperature and controlled by a pulsed power on-off system. Dielectric properties of -caprolactam, -caprolactone, and their mixture were measured in the microwave range from 0.4 to 3 GHz, showing that both -caprolactam and -caprolactone exhibited effective absorption of microwave energy to induce a fast chemical reaction. The microwave induced anionic copolymerization of -caprolactam and -caprolactone generated copoly(amide-ester)s in yields as high as 70%. Conventional thermal and microwave copolymerization studies were also conducted for comparison with the microwave results. These studies demonstrated that an effective and efficient microwave method to copolymerize -caprolactam with -caprolactone in higher yield, higher amide content, and higher T g 's, relative to the thermal process, has been developed.