Prediction of glass transition temperatures of polyacrylates from the structures of motion units

Abstract

The glass transition temperature [Formula: see text] is the most important parameter of an amorphous polymer. A quantitative structure-property relationship (QSPR) was developed for [Formula: see text]s of 82 polyacrylates, by applying stepwise multiple linear regression (MLR) analysis. Molecular descriptors used to describe polymer structures were, for the first time, calculated from the motion units of polymer backbones, which are chain segments with 20 carbons in length (10 repeating units). After internal validation with leave-one-out (LOO) method, external validation was carried out to test the stability of the MLR model of [Formula: see text]s. Compared to the models already published in the literature, the MLR model in this paper was accurate and acceptable, although our model was based on bigger data sets. The feasibility of calculating molecular descriptors from the motion units of polymer backbones for developing [Formula: see text] models of polyacrylates has been demonstrated.