An experimental study of the influence of various factors on the time dependent nature of diffusion in polymers

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Abstract
The kinetics of the sorption and desorption of methylene chloride by cellulose acetate and polystyrene have been studied by following the increase in mass of a polymer sheet suspended from a quartz spring in an atmosphere of the vapor. A tenfold change in the molecular weight of polystyrene does not alter the sorption rate, but a slight increase in rate is obtained when the molecules of this polymer are given a large unidirectional orientation in the plane of the polymer sheet. In agreement with other work, a considerable increase in both sorption and desorption rate is obtained by increasing the pressure of the solvent vapor. Previously it had been shown that a plot of the mass of sorbed vapor against the square root of the time has a slope that increases with time. It was shown that this peculiar characteristic of the sorption kinetics could not be accounted for by a purely concentration dependent diffusion coefficient, and it was suggested that it might be due either to a slow response of the diffusion coefficient to change in solvent concentrationor to the stresses set up between the swollen and unswollen parts of the polymer. Here it is shown that neither hypothesis alone will account for all the observed effects of the thickness of the polystyrene or cellulose acetate sheet upon the sorption and desorption kinetics. Sorption experiments on polymer sheet already containing some dissolved solvent do not show this peculiar characteristic of increasing slope when the concentration difference between the start and the end of the experiment is small, but when this is large very peculiar curves are obtained. The effects can be reconciled with either of the proposed mechanisms. Measurements of the changes in area during sorption and desorption have been measured on polystyrene sheet and these lend support to the strain hypothesis but also indicate that some plastic, as well as elastic, deformation of the polymer takes place during sorption.

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