Can C60 stabilise polymers?
19 Jun 2001
They've been the major chemical discovery looking for an application for over a decade now. But fullerenes, the soccerball-shaped form of pure carbon, may soon be finding uses to stabilise polymers, if research from St Petersburg proves fruitful.
A team from the Institute of Macromolecular Compounds at the Russian Academy of Sciences is investigating the effects of adding fullerenes - both the C60 and C70 form - to a polymer used in electronics and engineering, 2,6-dimethyl-1,4-phenylene oxide (POP).
This polymer often has to withstand high temperatures, so the researchers heated the POP-fullerene blends, which contained 1-4 per cent of the carbon molecules, to 500°C in a vacuum. They then analysed any volatile products formed during the heating process using a variety of spectroscopic and calorimetric techniques.
The results showed that the fullerenes increased the temperature at which the polymer began to decompose. The C70 form seems to be more effective than the C60 molecule.
The researchers believe that a reaction between radicals formed in the heating process and the electrons surrounding the atoms in the fullerene molecules may be responsible for the effect, along with an interaction between the fullerenes and the oxygen atoms in the POP chains.
