**1. Introduction**

154 Thermoplastic Elastomers

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> In a contemporary world goods made from plastics and other polymeric materials are applied in many areas of our life. Growing practical applications are mainly stimulated by better properties of modified polymers, in a comparison with the polymeric materials used so far. On a world polymer market a biggest production concerns thermoplastics, thus modification of their properties has become one of a most important research challenges in a field of a polymer chemistry and technology, and materials science as well.

> Silicones (polysiloxanes) are a large and most important group of various inorganic-organic (hybrid) compounds and materials, composed of silicon and oxygen atoms in their main chains and organic substituents bound to silicon. Silicones play an important role among polymers with special properties, because they possess many unusual features. Even an addition of a very small amount of silicones causes a crucial improvement of properties of modified materials. Most importantly: silicones increase hydrophobicity and improve water resistance and thermal stability of many materials. Silicones exhibit excellent chemical, physical, and electrical properties. Most popular organosilicon polymers are polydimethylsiloxanes (PDMS). Silicones are mainly applied as silicone oils, rubbers, and resins (Noll, 1968; Rościszewski & Zielecka, 2002). Similar positive effects on properties of polymers and other materials can be reached by the addition of reactive silanes, siloxanes, and silicates, which are also used very often in practice for the modification of polymeric and inorganic materials. An important practical meaning have also other organosilicon polymers (polysilanes, polycarbosilanes, polysilazanes, etc.), and many functional silanes with different chemical structures, containing reactive groups, mostly bound to silicon atom, but also quite often attached to carbon.

> We observe a continuously growing interest in applications of reactive silanes and polysiloxanes in many different fields of science (with focus on materials science) and the chemical technology, and this is a subject of our review.

<sup>\*</sup> Corresponding Author

Modification of Thermoplastics with Reactive Silanes and Siloxanes 157

Weak interactions between polysiloxane chains (through van der Waals forces) are responsible for poor mechanical properties of these polymers at room temperature, even in the case of PDMS with a very high molecular weights (Abe & Gunji, 2004). An improvement of mechanical properties of PDMS can be reached by addition of fillers (most often silica is used), by a dense crosslinking in the presence of peroxides, or by synthesis of siloxaneorganic copolymers of different structures (block, segmented, or graft). Since both systems are thermodynamically non-miscible it is impossible to prepare siloxane-organic copolymers from (,-dihydroxy) polydimethylsiloxanes, and it was necessary to use for this purpose ,-dihydro- or ,-divinylpolysiloxanes, but first of all to use the carbofunctional poly-

The general structure of carbofunctional polysiloxanes is presented on Fig. 1.

**<sup>n</sup>** ( **Si <sup>O</sup>** ) **Si**

Fig. 1. The chemical structure of ,-dihydro-, ,-divinyl-, and the carbofunctional polysiloxanes (R = H, CH = CH2, aminoalkyl, hydroxyalkyl, chloroalkyl groups, etc.)

hydrolysis reaction of alkoxysilane end groups (Scheme 1).

**HO-(Me2SiO)n-H + 2 ClMe2SiH - 2HCl HMe2SiO-(Me2SiO)n-SiMe2H** 

Scheme 1. The preparation of ,-di(hydroxypropyl)polydimethylsiloxanes.

 **R R** 

Macromolecules of the carbofunctional polydimethylsiloxanes (CFPS) are terminated with different functional alkylene groups. Most often on both ends of CFPS chains exist hydroxypropyl, aminopropyl, glicydoxypropyl, or methacryloxypropyl groups. The carbofunctional polysiloxanes may also be terminated with alkene groups (e.g. allyl groups) or with arylamine end groups: -C6H4NH2 (Kawakami & Abe, 1992). Quite often for synthesis of the carbofunctional polydimethylsiloxanes are used ,-dihydrosiloxanes, which are synthesized in condensation reactions of polysiloxane-,-diols with chloro(hydro) dimethylsilane. The CFPS containing terminal carbinol groups (C-OH) are products of hydrosilylation reaction of different ,-dihydropolysiloxanes with allyl derivatives (Marciniec et al., 1992b), e.g. allyloxytrimethylsilane (Greber & Jäger, 1962), followed by

**[ Pt ] 2 CH2=CH-CH2-OSiMe3**

**H2O / H+**

**Me3SiO-CH2CH2CH2-SiMe2O-(Me2SiO)n-SiMe2-CH2CH2CH2-OSiMe3** 

**HO-(CH2)3-SiMe2O-(Me2SiO)n-SiMe2-(CH2)3-OH** 

**CH3 CH3**

**CH3 CH3**

**2.4 Carbofunctional Polysiloxanes (CFPS)** 

siloxanes (CFPS) (Chruściel et al., 2008b).

**2.4.1 Synthesis of CFPS** 
