Patent ID: 7928155

Claim:
A method of making a polymer-organoclay composite composition, said method comprising: (a) contacting under condensation polymerization conditions a first monomer, a second monomer, a solvent, and an organoclay composition, said organoclay composition comprising alternating inorganic silicate layers and organic layers, to provide a first polymerization reaction mixture, wherein one of said first monomer and second monomers is a diamine and the the other is an dianhydride; (b) carrying out a stoichiometry verification step on the first polymerization reaction mixture; (c) optionally adding additional reactant (monomer 1, monomer 2, or chainstopper) to the first polymerization reaction mixture to provide a second polymerization reaction mixture; and (d) removing solvent from the first polymerization reaction mixture or the second polymerization reaction mixture to provide a first polymer-organoclay composite composition comprising a polymer component and an organoclay component wherein the organoclay component is at least 10% exfoliated and wherein said organoclay composition comprises a quaternary phosphonium cation having structure X wherein Ar 1 , Ar 2 , and Ar 3 are independently C 4 -C 500 aromatic radicals; Ar 4 is a bond or a C 4 -C 50 aromatic radical; “a” is a number from 1 to about 200; “c” is a number from 0 to 3; R 1 is independently at each occurrence a halogen atom, a C 1 -C 20 aliphatic radical, a C 5 -C 20 cycloaliphatic radical, or a C 4 -C 20 aromatic radical; and R 2 is a halogen atom, a C 1 -C 20 aliphatic radical, a C 5 -C 20 cycloaliphatic radical, a C 4 -C 50 aromatic radical, or a polymer chain..