The study of electroactive block copolymer containing aniline pentamer isolated from different solvents

Abstract

AbstractFor the films and powder of polymers containing conductive oligomer are usually obtained from solution, the choice of better solvents for the regular arrangement of oligomers is very important for the higher conductivity. Because of the poor solubility of the oligomers, it is difficult to study the arrangement directly in most common solvents, so, we synthesized a triblock copolymer, mPEG2k‐aniline pentamer‐mPEG2k, as the model to investigate the arrangement–solvent relationship. For the poor solubility of the AP block in common solvents, the copolymer self‐assembled into spheric micelles in toluene and into lamellar crystals in water and THF. The crystallinity (Xc) and crystallization temperature (Tc) values of mPEG blocks in powders prepared from different solvents differed obviously, which may be the effect of different self‐assembled structures. From the two‐phase model of one‐dimensional electron density correlation function of SAXS, the long period of copolymer prepared from THF was presumably equal to the long period of pure mPEG plus the chain length of AP, which demonstrates that the AP blocks arrange regularly in the noncrystalline regions. In the selected solvents, the ones with higher polarity and better solubility induced more regular arrangement of AP blocks, which may be useful for choosing solvents for preparation of higher conductivity polymers' films containing aniline oligomers. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 47: 1298–1307, 2009