The structure of wholly aromatic polyesters with bulky side chains: Poly(p-phenylene phenylthioterephthalate)

Poly(p-phenylene phenylthio-terephthalate) (PPTT) forms nematic melts and is highly crystalline in the solid state, despite the probable random 2- and 3-dispo-sition of the S-phenyl substituents. The X-ray pattern of melt-spun fibers of PPTT contains 24 Bragg reflections that are indexed by a monoclinic unit cell with dimensions a = 28.6 Å, b = 4.81 Å, c = 12.57 Å (fiber axis), and γ= 101.6°. The cell contains monomer units of four chains that are arranged in pairs with the thiophenyl side chains interdigitated; successive pairs of chains are staggered by about c/2. We used molecular mechanics modeling to simulate arrays of chains with random 2- and 3-disposition of the side chains on the terephthalic acid units and compared the results with those for an idealized structure in which all the substituents were at the 2-position. The refined model for random substitution is more distorted, but the average separations of the monomer units are within the experimental errors of the observed unit cell dimensions, and their standard deviations are very similar to those derived from the line-broadening data. The potential energy of the model with random substitution is only about 1.9 kcal/mol of monomer higher than that for the model with all-2-substitution, indicating random substitution is not a major problem to the formation of an ordered structure. Compared to the structure formed by the analogous polyester, poly(p-phenylene phenylterephthalate) (PPT), the additional flexibility due to the thioether linkage between the backbone and phenyl side groups in PPTT allows better chain packing both within and between the layers of stacked chains.