Jong‐Beom Baek, Christopher B. Lyons, Loon-Seng Tan
Sep 30, 2004
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Quality indicators
Journal
Macromolecules
Abstract
In-situ polymerization of 3-phenoxybenzoic acid in the presence of various amounts (1−30 wt %) of vapor-grown carbon nanofibers (VGCNF) was carried out in poly(phosphoric acid)/phosphorus pentoxide (PPA/P2O5; 1:4 w/w) medium. 3-Phenoxybenzoic acid polymerizes via Friedel−Crafts acylation in PPA to form poly(oxy-1,3-phenylenecarbonyl-1,4-phenylene) or mPEK. The resulting mPEK-g-VGCNF products that contained less than 10 wt % of VGCNF were soluble in N-methyl-2-pyrrolidinone and had intrinsic viscosity values ranging from 1 to 1.73 dL/g in methanesulfonic acid (MSA) at 30 ± 0.1 °C. The overall evidence based on the data from elemental analysis (EA), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) as well as scanning electron and transmission electron microscopies of the resulting materials implicates that VGCNF remained more or less structurally intact under the mildly acidic, relatively high-shearing and hot polymerization conditions. It is also evident that under thes...