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Stabilizing effect of oxygen on the initial stages of poly(methyl methacrylate) degradation

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Abstract

The stabilizing effect of oxygen on the thermal decomposition of free radical polymerized poly(methyl methacrylate) was studied by thermogravimetric (TG/DTG) analyses. The influences of fraction of PMMA chain containing an unsaturated vinyl end on this effect of oxygen were investigated in detail to get further insight into the nature of this phenomenon. Meanwhile, the inhibiting effect of nitric oxide (NO) on the thermal decomposition of PMMA was also evaluated in order to ascertain how oxygen inhibits the thermal degradation of PMMA. The results show that both oxygen and NO have stabilizing effect on the thermal degradation of PMMA. Oxygen can entirely suppress its degradation initiated by the unsaturated vinyl end, but NO only has limited inhibiting effect on it. It was demonstrated by the limited inhibiting effect of NO that, actually, the process that oxygen inhibits the thermal degradation of PMMA is more complicated than the process that oxygen and polymer radical, generated by initiation at the unsaturated vinyl ends, combine to form a more thermal stable structure. Moreover, such process is irreversible and has nothing to do with the noticed acceleration degradation of inhibited PMMA at latter stage of degradation.

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Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate the financial support for this project received from Nation Natural Science Foundation of China (51273026), PetroChina Innovation Foundation (2013D-5006-0502) and Young Scholar Scientific Foundation from the Science and Technology department of Jilin Province (20130522140JH).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Engineering Research Center of Synthetic Resin and Special Fiber, Ministry of Education, Changchun University of Technology, Changchun, 130012, China

    Chunlei Cao, Jie Liu, Jianying Ma, Zhiyong Tan & Huixuan Zhang

  2. Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, 130012, China

    Huixuan Zhang

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  1. Chunlei Cao
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  2. Jie Liu
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  3. Jianying Ma
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  4. Zhiyong Tan
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Correspondence to Chunlei Cao.

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Cao, C., Liu, J., Ma, J. et al. Stabilizing effect of oxygen on the initial stages of poly(methyl methacrylate) degradation. J Therm Anal Calorim 123, 1459–1467 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-015-5018-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-015-5018-x

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