MOLECULAR MODELING OF THE STRUCTURE OF A WHOLLY AROMATIC THERMOTROPIC COPOLYESTER

This paper describes the application of molecular mechanics modelling to study the solid-state structure of the thermotropic copolyester prepared from p-hydroxybenzoic acid and 2-hydroxy-6-naphthoic acid. X-ray analysis of as-spun fibres shows that the structure consists of parallel, highly extended chains of completely random comonomer sequence which are packed on an orthorhombic pseudo-hexagonal network and ordered in three dimensions. Molecular models for arrays of chains of the 75/25 copolymer were constructed with chain extension and lateral packing as suggested by the X-ray data. Typical starting models consisted of 19 non-identical sequences of 12 monomers in a variety of conformations. The models were optimized by potential energy minimization using the SYBYL(R) software package. Results for minimization of 20 such arrays, with different sequences adn starting conformations, suggest that there are a large number of multiple minima of approximately equal energy. The main effect of the refinement was to change the aromatic ester torsion angles and thus eliminate the bad contacts between adjacent chains. In the final models, the aromatic ester torsion angles are distributed about means that are close to those observed in low molecular weight model compounds. Most importantly, the potential energies of the copolymer arrays are similar to those predicted for analogous models of the two homopolymers, indicating that there are no significant problems in packing non-identical chains of the copolymers on the same lattice. In addition, we have simulated the X-ray diffraction data by calculating the cylindrically averaged scattering intensity transforms for the models of arrays of chains. We find that even the small arrays considered here predict the observed Bragg reflections on the equator and first layer line, as well as the non-periodic meridional maxima, and the results are sensitive enough to allow for selection between different possible conformations.