STUDIES OF REACTIONS WITH POLYMERS .6. THE MODIFICATION OF PAN WITH PRIMARY AMINES

A series of modified polyacrylonitriles have been obtained with several primary amines, such as ethanolamine, ethylenediamine, ethylamine, n‐butylamine, and n‐octylamine, without any catalysts in DMSO. This paper presents the syntheses of these new modified polymers and discusses the resultant structures and reaction mechanism by IR, NMR, and UV spectra. Composition was obtained by elemental analysis. Moreover, some physical properties of polymer were also investigated. It was found that all these primary amines could initiate coloration of polyacrylonitrile, which involves linking up of adjacent nitrile groups, and also reactions of the amines with the nitrile groups. However, the product of polyacrylonitrile with ethanolamine and with ethylenediamine were soluble in water when the mole ratio of amine group to nitrile group was 2. This interesting fact promoted a more detailed study of the modification of polyacrylonitrile with these amines. Crosslinking of the products of PAN with ethanolamine (or with ethylenediamine) was achieved by heat treatment. A mechanism for the formation of crosslinking was proposed. Copyright © 1990 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.