TRANSESTERIFICATION OF POLY(ETHYLENE TEREPHTHALATE) WITH POLY(ε-CAPROLACTONE)*

Transesterification of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) with poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) was investigated bymeans of NMR spectroscopy, extraction experiments, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and phase contrast microscopy(PCM). The ~1H-NMR results show that transesterification takes place in the melt blends and leads to the formation of thePET-PCL copolyester with a chemical structure similar to ethylene terephthalate-ε-caprolactonc copolycster (TCL)synthesized directly from monomers. However, even in the blend that has been transesterified for 8 h, the random PET-PCLcopolyester, PET-PCL copolyester with long PET or long PCL segments and the unreacted PET and PCL homopolymersmay coexist. Due to the low mobility of PET and PCL chains and the high viscosity of the two macromolecules, thetransesterification proceeds with difficulty. Furthermore, PET is incompatible with PCL, the transesterification can onlyoccur at the interface or in the interfacial region between two phases, and finally the reaction can only reach a localequilibrium. These results indicate that in fact the transesterification in the melt blend between two incompatiblehomopolymers could not lead to the formation of completely random or typical block copolyesters.