New fluorinated poly(ether sulfone imide)s with high thermal stability and low dielectric constant

• Poly(ether sulfone imide)s with multi-pendant trifluoromethyl groups were reported.
• The polymers showed good solubility and film-forming performance.
• Their films possessed high thermal stability and low dielectric constant.

A new aromatic diamine monomer with four pendant trifluoromethyl groups, 2,2′-bis{3-[3,5-di(trifluoromethyl)phenyl]-4-[4-amino-phenoxy]phenyl}sulfone (3), was successfully synthesized through free-radical substitution, Suzuki coupling and nucleophilic substitution reactions using bis(4-fluorophenyl)sulfone and N-bromosuccinimide as starting materials. Then it was employed to prepare a series of fluorinated poly(ether sulfone imide)s (PESIs 5a–c) with various commercial aromatic dianhydrides via a one-step high-temperature polycondensation. These polymers could be easily dissolved in some strong polar organic solvents, such as N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone, N,N-dimethylacetamide, and N,N-dimethylformamide, chloroform, dichloromethane and tetrahydrofuran at room temperature. Flexible and transparent films can be obtained easily by solution casting. They had high thermal stability and didn't show significant weight loss up to temperature of approximately 530 °C in nitrogen and air atmospheres. They also revealed low dielectric constants with the values in the range of 2.74–2.90 at 1 MHz measured for their capacitance.

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