| Abstract: | Diffusion of aqueous and nonaqueous coagulants into lyotropic/nematic solutions of poly(phenylene benzobisoxazole) in polyphosphoric acid using fluorescence microscopy is reported. The fluorescence microscopy technique offers advantages in that the experiment is independent of the coagulant and the experiments can be performed in a front surface mode so that optically thin samples are not required. The diffusion process is modeled as Case II diffusion as described by Crank and Park. The apparent diffusion coefficients are found to range from ～ 2 × 10?6 cm2/s to ～ 2 × 10?7 cm2/s for aqueous and nonaqueous coagulants. The apparent diffusion coefficients can be varied by several orders of magnitude (e.g., down to ～ 3 × 10?10 cm2/s) by varying the concentration of polyphosphoric acid in the coagulant. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. |
