Effects of organic groups on structure and viscoelastic properties of organic-inorganic polysiloxane hybrid system

The structure and viscoelastic properties of an organic-inorganic hybrid system composed of an organically modified polysiloxane network were examined, and the influence of organic groups on elastic-modulus variation by heat treatment was studied. The increase in the number of phenyl (Ph) groups per silicon decelerates the increase in elastic modulus; the substitution of the Ph group for a methyl (Me) group accelerates it. The system basically consists of R4-mSi[O-]m/2 units, where R is the organic group. The 29Si magic-angle spinning (MAS) NMR and gel permeation chromatography (GPC) measurements classified the structure related with the viscoelastic behavior into two factors: the number of bridging oxygens and the distribution of molecular weight. The elastic modulus was expressed by these structural factors through a simple empirical formula, irrespective of the type and number of the organic groups. The effects of the organic groups on the variation in elastic modulus by heat treatment were found to work mostly only through the molecular-weight change, and such effects can be controlled by the type or the number of organic groups.