CONFORMATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF POLY(ACRYLIC ACID) AND POLY(METHACRYLIC ACID)

A full-relaxation optimization of molecule and the Dreiding force field are employed toobtain the geometry parameters and the conformational energy surfaces of meso or racemicdyad of poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) and poly(methacrylic acid) (PMAA). Three differentcarbonyl-bond orientations of side-groups resulted in the differences in depth of potentialwells in their energetic contours for a meso or a racemic dyad. These discrepancies areinterpreted as a result of various fine structures corresponding to grid search conformationsas well as thereby different interactions. The analysis on the most stable conformationsof PMAA confirmed that the ester groups are nearly perpendicular to the plane definedby the two adjacent skeletal bonds but may possibly change their relative orientations tomeet the requirement of lower energy during the conformational state transition. For eachpolyme, two global energy maps of a meso and a racemic dyad were finally constructedfrom the superposition of energy data for the three kinds of side-group orientations by theBoltzmann factors. From an ensemble average, the proposed scheme with three rotationalisomeric states (RIS) allowed us to access the experimentally unperturbed dimensions ofPAA chain via the configurational statistical mechanics. Although the calculation wasbased on the short-range, local interactions, it was interested to note that the experimentalcharacteristic ratios just fell within the range calculated for atactic chains.