Preparation of heat‐resistant branched poly(styrene‐alt‐NPMI) by ATRP with divinylbenzene as the branching agent

AbstractHeat‐resistant branched poly(styrene‐alt‐NPMI) has been prepared via atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) of styrene (St) and N‐phenyl maleimide (NPMI) with divinylbenzene (DVB) as the branching agent in anisole at 80°C. Gas chromatography (GC) was used to determine the conversion of the reactants. Triple detection gel permeation chromatography (TD‐GPC) was used to analyze the copolymers. The results show that the polymerization yields primary chains predominately in the early stages and the formation of branched molecules occurs mainly when conversion is higher than 50%. As expected, higher dosage of DVB in our investigation range favors the formation of polymers with higher degree of branching. All the resulting branched poly(styrene‐alt‐NPMI)s have glass transition temperature (Tg) above 175°C, extrapolated initial weight loss temperature (Ti) above 410°C and statistic heat‐resistant index above 200°C. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2011