Alkaline hydrolysis of polyacrylamide

Abstract

Abstract Polyacrylamide has been reported to show an abnormal behavior on alkaline hydrolysis, that is, the reaction rate is quite high at the initial stage and decreases rapidly with increasing conversion. This phenomenon has been attributed to the polymer structure. We have found that the low molecular weight diamides show essentially the same behavior and concluded that this abnormality is due to the polyfunctionality and is not necessarily specific to polymers.