THE GLASS-TRANSITION TEMPERATURE OF RANDOM COPOLYMERS .1. EXPERIMENTAL-DATA AND THE GORDON-TAYLOR EQUATION

Glass transition temperatures T-g for a wide variety of (A-random-B) c opolymers have been determined by means of d.s.c., with A, B = methyl acrylate, ethyl acrylate, n-butyl acrylate, iso-butyl acrylate, t-buty l acrylate, 2-ethyl hexylacrylate, methyl methacrylate, ethyl methacry late, n-butyl methacrylate, iso-butyl methacrylate, t-butyl methacryla te, acrylonitrile, styrene and vinyl chloride, respectively. The compo sition of the AB copolymers was varied from 0 to 100% (w/w) in steps o f 20%, thus yielding a data set of more than 400 T-g values. All types of T-g versus composition dependence were recovered, resulting in lin ear, convex, concave and sigmoidaI shapes. In most cases, a satisfying description of the data was achieved via a one-parameter fit accordin g to the Gordon-Taylor equation. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science L td.