When a polymer has stereochemical isomerism within the chain, its properties often depend on the stereochemical structure. Thus the analysis of the stereochemistry of polymers is important and NMR spectroscopy has been the most valuable tool for this purpose.
Definition of TacticityIn polymers of vinyl monomers CH 2 =CH-X or vinylidene monomers CH 2 =CXY, the main-chain carbons having substituent group(s) are termed "pseudo-asymmetric" since, if the chain ends are disregarded, such carbons do not have the four different substituents necessary to qualify for being truly asymmetric. Nevertheless, they have the possibility of relative handedness. The simplest regular arrangements along a chain are the isotactic structure, in which all the substituents are located on the same side of the zigzag plane representing the chain stretched out in an all-trans conformation. The structure is often represented by a "rotated Fischer projection" in which the main-chain skeleton is represented by a horizontal line (Eq. 3.1).
RNK. Hatada et al., NMR Spectroscopy of Polymers © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004 74 3 Stereochemistry of PolymersFor a vinyl polymer, two types of diads should be considered, which are designated as meso (m) and racemo (r). Using these notations, a sequence in an isotactic polymer can be represented as -mmmmmm-and that in a syndiotactic polymer as -rrrrrrrr-. In reality, however, purely isotactic or syndiotactic polymers are rarely obtainable but the extent of regularity is always the question to be analyzed. Tacticity [1] is the term used for defining such stereochemical features of polymers. 1