Ultrasonic study of liquid-quenched sulfur from room temperature to 200 °C

Abstract

When liquid S is heated above 159 °C, the S8 rings (which are the dominant structural units below this temperature) break open and polymerize into helical chains (S∞). Therefore, samples quenched from liquids at temperatures above or below 159 °C would be different in various properties by the difference in the amount of S∞. The present ultrasonic study of liquid-quenched S in the temperature range from room temperature to 200 °C has revealed this difference. It has been demonstrated that ultrasonics is as powerful as a conventional thermal analysis in dealing with the variation of a material with increasing temperature, even though both techniques were found to be relatively insensitive to the polymerization process.