Polyacrylonitrile copolymer is one of the most important precursors for the production of high performance carbon materials. The architecture of the precursor has significant influences on the properties of the resulting carbon materials. In this study, various poly(acrylonitrile-co-itaconic acid)s (PAIs) are prepared by free radical polymerization and controlled/'living' radical polymerization technique. The structural evolution of PAI during its thermal oxidative stabilization (TOS) processes was investigated through Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) analysis. The TOS process includes cyclization, oxidation and tautomerization, as characterized by the evolution of the overlapping peaks of cyclic C=C, C=N, N-H and C=O vibrations in FT-IR. An investigation of the evolution of the copolymer architectures determines the optimal structural characteristics of the precursors for high performance carbon materials. Acknowledgements: This research was supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (2012R1A1A2005345).

Structural transformation of architecture controlled poly(acrylonitrile-co-itaconic acid) into carbon materials

248th National Meeting (2014)

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