Thermal behavior of co[poly(ethylene terephthalate)-p-oxybenzoate]

In a previous investigation of a copoly(ethylene terephthalate)-p-oxybenzoate] containing 30 mole % oxybenzoate units (referred to as T2/30), Krigbaum and Salaris identified the endotherm at t_III = 244°C as a nematic → isotropic transition. Subsequent investigation revealed that the t_III endotherm disappeared if the polymer is heated to the isotropic melt or dissolved and reprecipitated. The loss of the t_III transition might be due to molecular weight reduction, sequence randomization, or erroneous identification of the transition. Viscosity and high-field NMR data eliminate the first two explanations. Annealing studies at temperatures higher than those of the earlier work demonstrate that the t_III transition, in fact, represents the melting of crystallites formed during a high-temperature annealing operation. Moreover, we cannot determine the thermodynamic melting temperature of the copolymer from solid-state annealing studies. Hence, the principal objective of the study of Krigbaum and Salaris, to compare the enthalpies and entropies of the nematic → isotropic and crystal → isotropic transitions, must be fulfilled in future work.