Preparation of Photochromic polyvinyl chloride

The spirobenzopyran family constitutes one of the most widely studied photochromic systems owing to their facility of synthesis and potential applications in opticalinformation storage and processing, memory devices, molecular switching, and other emerging technologies [1]. The photochromism of spirobenzopyran is related with areversible color change between the closed-ring (colorless) spiropyran (SP) structure and the open-ring (highly colored) merocyanine (MC) form [2,3]. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) was N3-functionalized firstly. The product was obtained by click reaction of functionalized polymer and photochromic compound (fig 1 ). The product was characterized by IR and 1HNMR spectroscopy methods, as well as elemental analysis. The photochromic properties of the resulting photochromic functionalized polystyrene were studied by UV-Vis spectroscopy