Vacuum pyrolysis study of graphite-like pyropolymers from 1,4-diphenyl-1-buten-3-yne

1,4-Diphenyl-1-buten-3-yne was metathesis polymerized over NbCl₅- or TaCl₅-based catalysts followed by pyrolysis to obtain graphite-like pyropolymers. The brown metathesis polymer, poly(1,4-diphenyl-1-buten-3-yne), has the structure of fully conjugated backbone and was annealed at 250 °C to obtain partially crosslinked polymer which showed 20% increase of carbon residue on pyrolysis over 400 °C than the pyrolyzed poly(1,4-diphenyl-1-buten-3-yne) without annealing. The polymers were characterized by GPC, EA, NMR, XPS, TGA, DSC, FT-IR, laser-Raman, x-ray diffraction, and SEM studies.