Abstract

BORTOLATO, S.A et al. Photo-induced curing of thymine-based bioinspired polymers. a chemometric analysis. Lat. Am. appl. res. [online]. 2013, vol.43, n.4, pp. 329-336. ISSN 1851-8796.

The curing process of new materials based on styrene monomers functionalized with thymine and charged ionic groups was studied using UV-vis spectroscopy in combination with chemometric models. The effect of the copolymer molecular weight on the immobilization point was analyzed. The evolution of the curing process of the copolymer (4-vinylbenzyl) thymine (VBT) -vinylbenzyl triethyl ammonium chloride (VBA) involved three species, which absorb in the spectral region analyzed. The contributions of each species to the total signal at each irradiation time were determined, and the kinetic constant of the crosslinking reaction was estimated. The study allowed evaluating the consistency of the chemometric decomposition, obtaining a reasonable correlation between the frequency spectra and the time evolution calculated with the algorithm. The chemometric analysis showed to be a powerful tool to provide complementary information on photo-induced immobilization of VBT-VBA films, which is crucial for developing new environmentally benign materials and new energy-saving methods

Keywords : Biopolymers; Thymine; Curing Kinetics; UV-vis Spectroscopy; Chemometrics.