Sulfur copolymers (SDIB) from inverse vulcanization of elemental sulfur (S8) for polymer blend

Elemental sulfur (S-8) is largely available resource as by-product from petroleum refining process which is causing "excess sulfur problem' due to its limited usage. The utilization of sulfur as valuable material will not only address environmental concerns but provide cost-effective ways of consuming this huge amount of waste to develop new high-value, high-volume products. One facile synthetic method of utilizing sulfur directly as feedstock to produce polymeric material is inverse vulcanization. In this study, sulfur copolymers (SDIB) was synthesized via inverse vulcanization from S-8 and processed into polymer blend with component polymers, polybenzoxazine (PBz) and poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) to show its potential processability into polymer blend. Initially, synthesis of SDIB with varying feed ratios of sulfur to comonomer 1,3-diisopropenylbenzene (DIB) was evaluated for its resulting properties. Spectroscopy showed copolymerization reactions occurred based on the change in characteristic absorption peaks (C=C-H, C=C, C-H) present in the spectra. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) indicated that SDIB is more thermally stable with the increase in onset temperature of degradation. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) profile exhibited new single glass transition temperature (Tg) that slightly increased with higher DIB ratio indicating evolution of microstructures of copolymers produced. The processability of SDIB into polymer blend was investigated by using SDIB (50 wt% S) with PBz and PMMA. Blending process using simple mixing technique with solvents was carried out for SDIB/PBz (10/10 wt%) and SDIB/PMMA (7.65/7.65 wt%) blend compositions. The results of this study demonstrated that polymer-copolymers interactions influenced the phase structure and behaviour with polymer blend of SDIB/PBz showing higher degree of miscibility with more homogeneous and transparent blend as compared to SDIB/PMMA blend. The suitability of polymer blend in electrospinning of nanofibers could provide variety of new applications for SDIB.