Investigation of Hydrolysis in Poly(ethylene terephthalate) by FTIR-ATR

作     者：Bin Du 杨睿 Xu-ming Xie 

作者机构：Advance Materials Laboratory Department of Chemical Engineering Tsinghua University 

出 版 物：《Chinese Journal of Polymer Science》 (高分子科学（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2014年第32卷第2期

页      面：230-235页

核心收录：

学科分类：08[工学] 0805[工学-材料科学与工程（可授工学、理学学位）] 080502[工学-材料学] 

主　　题：Poly(ethylene terephthalate) FTIR-ATR Hydrolysis Acid/ester ratio. 

摘      要：The hydrothermal aging of poly（ethylene terephthalate） （PET） was investigated at 70-95 ℃. A new method to investigate the hydrolysis degree of PET by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy （FTIR） was proposed. The spectra during the hydrothermal aging were measured using attenuated total reflection accessory （ATR）. Peak resolving of carbonyl regions was performed, and the ratio of two groups of bands representing carboxylic acids and esters respectively were calculated to show the hydrolysis degree of ester groups in PET. The acid/ester ratio shows exactly the same trend as the average chain scission number per unit mass at various temperatures and thus can be used as a parameter to characterize the hydrolysis and random chain scission of PET. This method related to the hydrolysis mechanism directly, is simple, fast and convenient compared to the traditional methods such as viscometry, end-group titration and size exclusion chromatography （SEC）. It may also be useful in hydrolysis characterization of other polyesters.