Study of the solution properties of tactic polystyrenes

Summary

Viscosity measurements are reported for syndiotactic polystyrenes in a molar mass range from 35,000 to 400,000 g/mol and standard fractions of narrowly distributed atactic polystyrenes in a molar mass range from 50,000 to 600,000 g/mol in trichlorobenzene at 135 °C. The correlation between molar mass and intrinsic viscosity of different polystyrene samples was investigated as well as their solution properties. The results demonstrate that the intrinsic viscosity of polystyrene in thermodynamically good solvents is independent of the type of tacticity of the polystyrenes investigated here. The dilute solution properties were compared with those for isotactic and atactic polystyrenes. The small differences in their solution viscosities may occur due to the different molar mass distributions of differently synthesized samples.