Charakterisierung von vernetzten Polymeren, 9a. Verfolgung der Nachvernetzung von Poly(styrol-co-divinylbenzol) zu feinporigen Adsorberpolymeren

The post-crosslinking of chloromethylated poly(styrene-co-divinylbenzene) to highly crosslinked, porous adsorbent polymers has been studied over a wide range of reaction temperature (50-80°C) and reaction time (up to 24.5 h). The crosslinked materials were characterized by nitrogen adsorption/desorption, mercury porosimetry, determination of the chlorine content, swelling measurements, pyrolysis gas chromatography, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Surface area, pore size distribution, pore volume, chlorine content, swelling degree, selected peak ratios in the pyrograms and in the FTIR spectrograms are shown to be clear functions of the post-crosslinking time. Therefore the post-crosslinking process can be monitored by physical as well as by chemical characterization methods. Moreover, information on the chemical homogeneity or inhomogeneity of the chloromethylated copolymers and the porous adsorbent polymers can be derived from the swelling and pyrolysis gas chromatographic results. Application of different solvents in the swelling experiments enables the construction of swelling diagrams. Based on these swelling diagrams, the anomalous swelling behaviour of adsorbent polymers during the post-crosslinking can be explained. The surface area and pore volume strongly increase with progressing post-crosslinking, and well-defined correlations between sample texture, pyrolysis and FTIR data are found. In general, changes of physical properties can be attributed to the chemical modification of the material due to the post-crosslinking.