Sulfur chemistry has become popular partially due to the overabundance and low cost of elemental sulfur. It is a byproduct of petroleum refinement, and there has been a push to find ways to utilize this excess sulfur. Inverse vulcanization is a solventless technique that is widely used to produce polysulfides. However, there are also different variations of this technique, with each one having a possible impact on the final polymer structure, including molecular weight, solubility, and sulfur rank, which is the number of consecutive sulfur atoms incorporated into the polymer. Different inverse vulcanization techniques were used to combine divinylbenzene (DVB) and elemental sulfur to prepare poly(S-DVB) with different compositions. Polymers were analyzed using <sup>1</sup>H NMR, GPC, ATR-IR, DSC, and Raman spectroscopy. The disulfide bonds within the polysulfides can be both oxidized by contact with air or oxidizing agents, as well as being reduced to thiols through the addition of reducing agents. Thiols in particular are a reactive functional group that would let the polymer to be easily modified, and allow for the incorporation of additional monomers leading to more applications in polymer chemistry. However, it is difficult to prepare polymers containing thiol functional groups using thiols directly because of their reactivity. This study explores the ability of polysulfides to be reduced to polythiols in a reliable way using sodium borohydride without losing integrity of the polymer backbone and minimizing the production of hydrogen sulfide gas. The sulfur content was varied to maintain a stable polymer matrix during reduction. The prepared polythiols were then characterized using <sup>1</sup>H NMR, ATR-IR, and Raman spectroscopy to examine the polymer structure. To determine the impact on polymer integrity, samples were analyzed by GPC.

Characterization and reduction of varied compositions of polysulfides produced via inverse vulcanization

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.