Nuclear magnetic resonance studies on microstructure of ethylene copolymers. VII. Proton resonance spectra of hydrolyzed ethylene–vinyl acetate copolymers¹

Complete and partial alcoholyses of ethylene–vinyl acetate (E–VA) copolymers yield ethylene–vinyl alcohol (E–VOH) copolymers and ethylene–vinyl acetate–vinyl alcohol (E–VA–VOH) terpolymers, respectively. From the 220‐MHz proton NMR spectra of E–VOH copolymers the stereoregular and chemical sequence distributions of the comonomers can be readily determined. Partially hydrolyzed E–VA polymers were acetylated with perdeuterated acetic anhydride. The monomer distributions in the terpolymers were then quantitatively determined by examining the proton spectra of the derived products. It was found that alcoholysis of E–VA polymers occurs preferentially at VA units which have neighboring VA groups.