SEQUENCE LENGTH DISTRIBUTION IN VINYL COPOLYMERS USING A MONTE-CARLO SIMULATION METHOD

A simulation of the copolymerization of vinyl monomers has been made, based on the assumption that the propagation step is a first order Markov process. The simulation aims at determining the copolymer sequence length distribution either in the form of mole fraction of monomer units of type 1 or 2 within segments of n consecutive units of either monomer 1 or 2 as a function of n, or in the form of fractions of different diads, triads, tetrads, etc. for any value of the fractional conversion. Statistical evaluation of the simulation as well as comparison with theoretical data and nuclear magnetic resonance data show that the simulation affords suitable sequence length distribution information when the initial propagation probability pairs (P11, P22) are not very dissimilar.