High-throughput determination of quantitative structure-property relationships using a resonant multisensor system: solvent resistance of bisphenol a polycarbonate copolymers.
Polymers are important materials for sensor, microfluidic, and other demanding applications. High-throughput screening methodology has been applied for the evaluation of the solvent resistance of a family of polycarbonate copolymers prepared from the reaction of bisphenol A (BPA), hydroquinone (HQ), and resorcinol (RS) in different solvents of practical importance, such as chloroform, tetrahydrofuran (THF), and methyl ethyl ketone (MEK). We employed a 24-channel acoustic-wave sensor system that provided previously unavailable capabilities for parallel evaluation of polymer solvent resistance. This high-throughput polymer evaluation approach assisted in construction of detailed solvent-resistance maps of polycarbonate copolymers and in determination of quantitative structure-property relationships. The best absolute solvent resistance of all studied copolymers was achieved in MEK, followed by chloroform and THF. A D-optimal mixture design was employed to explore the relationship between the copolymer compositions and their solvent resistance. The applied special cubic model for each solvent took into account the primary mixture terms such as BPA, HQ, and RS; binary interaction terms such as BPA-HQ, BPA-RS, and HQ-RS; and a ternary interaction term BPA-HQ-RS. A combination of the normal distribution of the model residuals and the very high values of adjusted R2 (0.97-0.99) demonstrated a good quality of the model. At a HQ concentration of 40 mol %, the solvent resistance was the highest for all tested solvents, and different concentrations of BPA (40 and 60 mol %) and RS (0 and 20 mol %) did not affect the solvent resistance. Without HQ, solvent resistance was decreasing with an increase of RS and decrease of BPA. Overall, with an increase of HQ concentration from 0 to 40 mol %, the solvent resistance of BPA-HQ-RS copolymers was improved by up to 3 times in THF, by 21 times in chloroform, and by 32 times in MEK.