Homogenous one-pot synthesis of polyimides in polyphosphoric acid

A one-pot synthetic method to produce aromatic polyimides with high molecular weights from corresponding diamines and dianhydrides was developed, in which polyphosphoric acid (PPA) played a role of an excellent media for one-step synthesis of completely cyclized polyimides. The polymerization was carried out in the solid content of 10 wt/v% at 220 °C. The resulting products exhibited a homogeneous solution in the non-volatilizable PPA instead of precipitation form of the polyimides. The content of P2O5 in PPA had an influence on the molecular weight of the products, and the high percentage of P2O5 resulted in the relative high inherent viscosity. FTIR and Carbon-13 NMR were employed to analyze the structures and TGA was used to evaluate the thermal stability. The polyimides prepared by this one-step route exhibited good thermal properties and high values of activation energies for the degradation, on comparison with the polyimides prepared in DAMc by two-step polymerization method.