Authors
Zhiyuan Qian, Luke Galuska, William W McNutt, Michael U Ocheje, Youjun He, Zhiqiang Cao, Song Zhang, Jie Xu, Kunlun Hong, Renée B Goodman, Simon Rondeau‐Gagné, Jianguo Mei, Xiaodan Gu
Publication date
2019/12/1
Journal
Journal of Polymer Science Part B: Polymer Physics
Volume
57
Issue
23
Pages
1635-1644
Publisher
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Description
Thermomechanical properties of polymers highly depend on their glass transition temperature (T g). Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) is commonly used to measure T g of polymers. However, many conjugated polymers (CPs), especially donor–acceptor CPs (D–A CPs), do not show a clear glass transition when measured by conventional DSC using simple heat and cool scan. In this work, we discuss the origin of the difficulty for measuring T g in such type of polymers. The changes in specific heat capacity (Δc p) at T g were accurately probed for a series of CPs by DSC. The results showed a significant decrease in Δc p from flexible polymer (0.28 J g−1 K−1 for polystyrene) to rigid CPs (10−3 J g−1 K−1 for a naphthalene diimide‐based D–A CP). When a conjugation breaker unit (flexible unit) is added to the D–A CPs, we observed restoration of the Δc p at T g by a factor of 10, confirming that backbone …
Total citations
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