Relationship between Dispersive Surface Tension and Density and Molecular Weight of Solvents and Polymers

Abstract

The surface and interfacial properties of polymers are important for their applications. Generally, the surface property is quantitatively characterized by the surface tension or surface tension component parameters, which are obtained with the contact angle technique. However, the contact angle technique has an inherent problem, contact angle hysteresis phenomenon, which will result in many incredible surface tension data. In order to find a simple and easy method to estimate the rationality of a surface tension result, the relationship between dispersive surface tension component and density and molecular weight is researched in this work. It is found that for 30 organic solvents, there is a good relationship between the dispersive surface tension r^d and the parameter . In addition, for 12 polymers, when the molecular weight is replaced with the molecular weight of the repeat unit, there is still the same relationship as for small liquids. However, because it is difficult to judge the accuracy of the published dispersive data of the polymers, the found experiential relationship needs further confirmation, requiring more reliable published data.

Keywords:

• dispersive force
• interface
• surface tension

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge financial support by the Scientific Research Foundation for Young Teachers of Northeast Forestry University (09007) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (20906010).