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Preparation and thermal properties of poly[acrylonitrile-co-(β-methylhydrogen itaconate)] used as carbon fiber precursor

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Abstract

In order to replace terpolymer with bipolymer, a bifunctional comonomer β-methylhydrogen itaconate (MHI) containing carboxyl group and ester group was synthesized to prepare poly[acrylonitrile-co-(β-methylhydrogen itaconate)] [P(AN-co-MHI)] bipolymers used as carbon fiber precursor for improving the stabilization and spinnability at the same time. The P(AN-co-MHI) bipolymers with different monomer feed ratios were characterized by elemental analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The results show that both the polymerization conversion and molecular mass of P(AN-co-MHI) reduce with the increasing MHI amounts in the feed due to the larger molecular volume of MHI than acrylonitrile (AN). The monomer reactivity ratios were calculated by Fineman–Ross and Kelen–Tüdõs methods, the results show good agreement and MHI possesses higher reactivity than AN. Two parameters \( E_{\text{s}} = A_{{1,629\,{\text{cm}}^{ - 1} }} /A_{{2,244\,{\text{cm}}^{ - 1} }} \) and \( SI = (I_{0} - I_{\text{S}} )/I_{0} \) were defined to evaluate the extent of stabilization, and the activation energy (E a) of the cyclization was calculated by Kissinger method and Ozawa method. The FTIR, XRD, and DSC results show that P(AN-co-MHI) bipolymers exhibit significantly improved stabilization characteristics than PAN homopolymer, such as larger extent of stabilization, lower initiation temperature, and smaller E a of cyclization, which is attributed to the ionic initiation by MHI comonomer and it is beneficial to preparing high-performance carbon fiber.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support of this work from National Science Foundation of China (No 20974018) and Important National Research Program “863” (No 2012AA030313-1) was gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Textile & Clothing, Jiangnan University, Lihu Road 1800, Wuxi, 214122, China

    Anqi Ju & Mingqiao Ge

  2. State Key Laboratory for Modification of Chemical Fibers and Polymer Materials, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Donghua University, Renmin Road 1999, Shanghai, 201620, China

    Hongyao Xu

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  1. Anqi Ju
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Correspondence to Anqi Ju.

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Ju, A., Xu, H. & Ge, M. Preparation and thermal properties of poly[acrylonitrile-co-(β-methylhydrogen itaconate)] used as carbon fiber precursor. J Therm Anal Calorim 115, 1037–1047 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-013-3534-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-013-3534-0

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