Chemical Forums
Chemistry Forums for Students => Organic Chemistry Forum => Topic started by: Karakth on September 25, 2005, 09:30:26 AM
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I've been doing some chemistry past papers and I came across a question:
If left in the presence of light, vinyl ethanoate slowly forms a colourless solid. Explain this and suggest a structure for the solid.
Now, I was thinking this, but it seems a little far-fetched:
The delocalised electrons in the vinyl ethanoate on bombardment of photons would become excited. This cause an electron to be given off from the compound, causing a positive charge on carbon number 2 (i.e. the carbon with the C=O bond). This carboncation would attack the slight negative charge on the oxygens of other molecules and form a polymer.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
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The most energetic photons radicalize some of the vinyl double bonds via pi-bond splitting (no ionization needs to occur) and these radicals then interact with other vinyl acetate molecules mostly at the vinyl pi-bond in a chain reaction.
The polymer that results is mostly polyvinylacetate via "radical polymerisation".
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Ah, thank you very much.