The penultimate effect on copolymerization under high pressure

Abstract

As one of investigations about the effects of pressure on chemical reactions, several copolymerizations, such as styrene-maleic anhydride, styrene-fumaro-nitrile, fumaronitrile-1, 1-diphenylethylene, fumaronitrile-methylmethacrylate, fumaronitrile-vinylphenylether, fumaronitrile-α-methylstyrene, fumaronitrile-methylacrylate, fumaronitrile-trans-stilbene and maleic anhydride-cyclopentene, were studied under the pressure up to 7, 000kg/cm^2. The copolymer compositions were affected by pressure with a few exceptions. The effect of pressure on these copolymerization reactions can be explained in terms of the penultimate effect, which has been proposed by Merz et al. to account for the influence of remote monomer unit on copolymerization. High pressure is generally presumed to be effective for the eliminating of the penultimate effect on copolymerization.