Synthesis and properties of poly (aniline-co-anisidine)

Summary form only given. Aniline and o-anisidine are chemically copolymerized at various temperature and monomer composition. Copolymerization reaction is confirmed by the solubility and electrochemical cyclic voltamograms of the resulted polymer. The pure copolymer can be separated from the homopolymers by THF/CHCl/sub 3/ two-step dissolution based on their solubility difference. O-Anisidine is more effective than o-toluidine to improve the solubility of Polyaniline. When the molar fraction of o-anisidine in monomer feed (f/sub 1/) is around 0.15-0.20, the resulted polymer is 100% soluble in THF, the corresponding tensile strength is more than 30 MPa and electrical conductivity remains at the magnitude of 10/spl deg/S/cm. When aniline and o-anisidine are copolymerized at low temperature (-5/spl deg/C), the resulted polymer is 100% soluble in THF, the tensile strength is more than 50MPa when f/sub 1/ is between 0.20-0.30 and its solution cast film shows apparent tensile yielding. GPC results demonstrate that the good solubility of the copolymer is related mainly to the steric repulsion between the methoxy groups. IR, /sup 13/C-NMR and F/sub 1/-f/sub 1/ (F/sub 1/ is molar fraction of anisidine in the copolymer) relationship indicate a random chain structure in the copolymer.