Temperature and crosslinking effects on the swelling of poly(isoprene) in isopiestic conditions

✍ Scribed by Gregory B. McKenna; John M. Crissman

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 220 KB
• Volume: 35
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0887-6266
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0488(19970415)35:5<817::aid-polb10>3.0.co;2-d

✦ Synopsis

Isopiestic measurements of solvent uptake have been made in the synthetic isoprene / benzene system for both crosslinked and uncrosslinked polymers in order to revisit the question of the swelling activity parameter S . Both the nonzero value of S at zero swelling and the appearance of a peak in S vs. degree of swelling have been observed in some solvent / rubber pairs and we here investigate both the crosslink and temperature dependencies of these phenomena. The data analysis is an extension of prior work from this laboratory using continuum thermodynamics concepts and avoiding molecular models in an attempt to establish the fundamental phenomenology of the process and the validity or lack of validity of the hypothesis that the mixing and elastic contributions to the free energy of networks are separable. We present results from measurements in benzene vapors at temperatures between 10 and 55ЊC for an uncrosslinked rubber and rubbers crosslinked with 1, 5, 10, and 15 parts per hundred dicumyl peroxide.