A general equation was derived for calculating the weight-average molecular weight of the sol fraction, after gelation, of crosslinked copolymers formed by condensation polymerisation; the equation includes those of Flory and Stockmayer as special cases. In qualitative agreement with a gel-degradation model based on the general equation, soluble degradation products from a polymer gel of well defined structure displayed a pattern of increasing molecular weight with increasing solubilisation; it was also observed that the second virial coefficient and the refractive index increment showed a particular form of variation with molecular weight. The gel-degradation model, applied to the known chemistry of the acid-sulfite delignification of wood, provided a good fit to the experimental points of the previously known topochemical effect. Studies on the preparation of polyether-gel synthons required a detailed review of phase-transfer-catalysed etherification reactions, and provided an explanation for the lower reactivity of (beta)-haloethers relative to alkyl halides.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.68540 |
| Date | January 1980 |
| Creators | Berry, Richard McKinnon. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Chemistry) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 000102779, proquestno: AAINK51877, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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