Conformational Properties of Poly(ether sulfone) and Poly(ether ketone)

Analyses offered for the conformational statistics of the two polymers poly(oxy-1,4-phenylenesulfonyl-1,4-phenylene), or poly(ether sulfone), PES, and poly(oxy-1,4-phenylenecarbonyl-1,4-phenylene), or poly(ether ketone), PEK, have arrived at rather different interpretations of the properties of these chains in dilute solution, despite their similar structure. In both cases, the dependence of the intrinsic viscosity [eta] on the weight-average molecular weight M sub w gives a large Mark-Houwink-Sakurada exponent nu = delta ln[ eta ]/ delta ln-(M sub w ), with nu equal to 0.73 and 0.78 for PEK and PES, respectively, but the interpretation of this feature differs in the two works. It is the objective here to reexamine the data on PES the frame used to analyze the data on PEK, to determine whether the same treatment could be applied and, if so, whether it results in a substantial change in the estimate for a.