Hello all,

I'm in serious trouble with my experiment now,

My system is using a pair of Polystyrene and poly(2vinylpyridine) connected with each other with ester bonds.

Considering the polarity of PS and P2VP which are nonpolar and polar, respectively, selective solvent for P2VP would be polar.

So, I guess 2 M NaOH/Water+Methanol (v/v 1/1) would cleave ester bonds and also dissolve chopped P2VP from the cleavage of the ester.

However, P2VP is considered as base, which means it would be hard to dissolve in base solvent, but base is normally used for the cleavage of ester since it cleaves ester faster than acid.

But if I cannot make solubility of P2VP in that solvent work, I cannot perfectly extract P2VP. Alternatively, I tried 1 N HCl and concentrated HCl, respectively.

But it seemed like that acid cleavage of ester didn't go well, which has been already proven by many references.

Here are my questions,

1) Is there any recommendation in solvent ?

2) With my acid condition, is there any way to improve this way like increase in Temp.?

3) Please let me know whatever you think it will be helpful for me.

Thank you so much for reading it.

Best,