Dependence of chain conformation and solution thermodynamics on composition for poly(ortho ester)s prepared from ketene acetals and mixtures of diols

Abstract

AbstractThe solution properties of a series of random copolymers prepared from ketene acetals with mixtures of diols have been characterized by dilute solution light scattering, chromatographic, and viscometric techniques. Five solvents with refractive indices ranging from 1.4 to 1.5 were used to obtain the correct weight average molecular weight. Changes in the unperturbed radius of gyration, obtained by combined size exclusion chromatography and low‐angle light scattering techniques, parallelled that predicted by simple considerations of changes in repeat unit size. Thus the relative contributions of differing copolymer–solvent interactions and changing unperturbed radii of gyration to the hydrodynamic volume of random copolymers of different compositions were evaluated.