Thermal degradation pathways poly

The Control of Thermal Degradation Pathways in Poly(vinyl chloride) by Heat-Stabilizing Additives... 

Poly(phenylene oxide) (PPO) is a thermoplastic, linear, noncrystalline polyether commercially produced by the oxidative polymerization of 2,6-dimethylphenol in the presence of a copper-amine catalyst. PPO has become one of the most important engineering plastics widely used for a broad range of applications due to its unique combination of mechanical properties, low moisture absorption, excellent electrical insulation property, dimension stability and inherent flame resistance. This chapter describes the recent development of this polymer, particularly on the production, application, compounding, properties of its alloys and their general process conditions. The polymerization mechanism and thermal degradation pathways are reviewed and new potential applications driven by the increasing environmental concerns in battery industry, gas permeability and proton-conducting membranes are discussed. 

Since the thermal degradation in phenylated polyphenyls of the type XXa is caused by the loss of pendant phenyl groups, and since the reported (4, 7, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15) properties of p-polyphenylenes are quite different from those of XXa, the synthesis of an unphenylated polyphenylene by this pathway was of considerable significance. Only a few results employing this reaction have thus far been obtained. [The p-poly-phenylenes reported are black or brown, insoluble, crystalline materials of lower thermal stability than XXa.]... 

Tt is known that the principal pathway for nonoxidative thermal - degradation of poly (vinyl chloride) (PVC) involves the evolution of HC1 and the accumulation of unsaturation in the polymer chains (1,2,3,4), as shown in Equation 1 ... 

Specific studies of the anaerobic thermal degradation of poly(alkylene naphthalate)s have not been done, but it is most likely that these polymers will degrade via similar pathways to their equivalent... 

The degradability of poly(vinyl alcohol) can be considered under two aspects. One is negative and is related to thermal degradation according to a reaction pathway common to the whole of vinyl polymers first of all, there is a dehydration that generates a polyconjugated polymer... 

These apparent contradictions can be rationalized in terms of a model which incorporates plasma-induced polymerization along with depolymerization. PBS has long been known to exhibit a marked temperature-dependent etch rate in a variety of plasmas. This is clearly seen in the previously published Arrhenius plots (3,7) for two different plasma conditions (Figure 1). This dependence is characteristic of an etch rate that is dominated by an activated material loss as would occur with polymer depolymerization. The latter also greatly accelerates the rate of material loss from the film. Bowmer et al. (10-13) have shown in fact that poly(butene-l sulfone) is thermally unstable and degrades by a depolymerization pathway. A similar mechanism had been proposed by Bowden and Thompson (1) to explain dry-development (also called vapor-development) under electron-beam irradiation. 

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