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Continuous polymerization of lactam–lactone block copolymers in a twin‐screw extruder
Author(s) -
Kim Byong Jun,
White James L.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
journal of applied polymer science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.575
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-4628
pISSN - 0021-8995
DOI - 10.1002/app.11792
Subject(s) - lactam , copolymer , monomer , caprolactone , reactive extrusion , polymer chemistry , caprolactam , polymerization , ring opening polymerization , materials science , chemistry , lactone , plastics extrusion , polymer , composite material , organic chemistry
Continuous copolymerizations of ϵ‐caprolactone with ϵ‐caprolactam and ω‐lauryl lactam were carried out in a modular intermeshing corotating twin‐screw extruder. Sodium hydride (initiator) and N ‐acetyl caprolactam (coinitiator) were used to synthesize lactam–lactone copolymers in a twin‐screw extruder. We consider the variables of feeding order and feed rate of comonomers on the reactive extrusion of lactam–lactone copolymers. It was observed that simultaneous feeding of both monomers with initiator and coinitiator in the first hopper produced a mixture of homopolymers. When we fed the lactam into the first hopper and caprolactone sequentially into the second hopper, we obtained the lactam–caprolactone block copolymers. However, when we fed caprolactone first into the first hopper and the lactam into the second hopper, the extruded product was a mixture of poly(ϵ‐caprolactone) and lactam monomer. We synthesized high molecular weight copolymers of poly(caprolactam‐ b ‐caprolactone) and poly(lauryl lactam‐ b ‐caprolactone) with different block lengths by sequential feeding of monomers. The block length of the block copolymer could be adjusted by controlling the feed rate of each monomer during reactive extrusion. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 88: 1429–1437, 2003