Monte Carlo simulation of diffusion effects on chain-extension reactions

The diffusion effects on chain-extension reactions using carboxyl-terminated polyamide-12 as a model reactant with bisoxazolines were investigated by the stochastic Monte Carlo method. Thus, complicated direct modeling and numerical calculations were avoided. The chain-length dependence and detailed diffusive behavior were discussed in depth. The diffusion effects retarded the progress of chain-extension reactions and led to lower coupling efficiency. The simulated results indicated that the diffusion effects could make the final molecular weight distributions wider. In the presence of diffusion and with the progress of the coupling efficiency, peaks in the evolution curves of the weight-average molecular weight and valleys in the evolution curves of the polydispersity index were observed, respectively, when the coupling efficiency was low enough. These phenomena were different from those without diffusion effects and were analyzed in detail. The critical entanglement chain length had strong effects on the simulated results of the diffusion effects, especially when its value was near the average chain length. The results also showed that the effects of the reactant degradation made the molecular weight distribution of the reaction system wider and weakened the diffusion effects on the coupling reaction. (c) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.