Composition of the Brown Material from Oxidized Nylon 6

Abstract

The dark compounds which are formed during the thermal oxidation of nylon 6 have been isolated and analyzed, mainly by thin-layer chromatography. The structures of the dark substances have been tentatively proposed, having assumed that the chemical principles that have been elucidated for the oxidation of pyrrolidine are equally valid for the oxidation of nylon. The ideas that have been developed differ from earlier ideas about the formation of brown materials, in that they are not necessarily based on the formation of derivatives of pyrrole. The new concepts account for the formation of polymers of variable molecular weight which may contain chromophores of variable length and of slightly different chemical compositions.