Conformational properties of polar polymers. I. Poly(vinyl chloride)

Abstract

AbstractA recently developed method for including polar bonds in conformational energy calculations is applied to poly(vinyl chloride). Inductive effects on dipole moments and the effects of intervening atoms on electrostatic interaction energies are represented by polarizability centers in conjunction with bond centered dipoles. Solvation energies are estimated by means of a continuum dipole–quadrupole electrostatic model. Calculated energies of a number of conformations of meso and racemic 2,4‐dichloropentane and the iso, syndio, and hetero forms of 2,4,6‐trichloroheptane give satisfactory representations of isomer and conformer populations. Electrostatic effects are found to be quite important. However they appear to be effectively of sufficiently short range that the calculated conformer energies are found to be fit well by a linear combination of interaction parameters (consisting of gauche, skew chlorine, four‐bond CH2…CH2, CH2…Cl, and Cl…Cl interactions) conventional to vinyl polymers and a special four‐bond interaction that arises when the bond sequence ClCHCH2CHCl is (nearly) coplanar. These interaction parameters when assembled into statistical weight matrices lead to calculated values of both the characteristic ratio and the dipole moment ratio in satisfactory agreement with experiment. Least energy paths for transitions between the most stable conformations are also calculated.