Preparation and thermal behavior of random poly(butylene terephthalate/azelate) copolyesters

✍ Scribed by Nadia Lotti; Lara Finelli; Andrea Munari; Piero Manaresi

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 164 KB
• Volume: 74
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0021-8995
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-4628(19991209)74:11<2694::aid-app17>3.0.co;2-z

✦ Synopsis

Poly(butylene terephthalate), poly(butylene azelate), and poly(butylene terephthalate/butylene azelate) random copolymers of various compositions were synthesized in bulk using the well-known two-stage polycondensation procedure, and characterized in terms of chemical structure and molecular weight. The thermal behavior was examined by thermogravimetric analysis and differential scanning calorimetry. As far as the thermal stability is concerned, it was found to be rather similar for all copolymers and homopolymers investigated. All the copolymers were found to be partially crystalline, and the main effect of copolymerization was a lowering in the amount of crystallinity and a decrease of melting temperature with respect to pure homopolymers. Flory's equation was found to describe the T m -composition data and permitted to calculate the melting temperatures (T°m ) and the heats of fusion (⌬H u ) of both the completely crystalline homopolymers. Owing to the high crystallization rate, the glass transition was observable only for the copolymers containing from 30 to 70 mol % of the terephthalate units; even though the samples cannot be frozen in a completely amorphous state, the data obtained confirmed that the introduction of the aromatic units gave rise to an increase of T g , due to a chain stiffening.