Initial Steps in Thermal Degradation of Fractions of PVC with Different Tacticities

Abstract

PVC samples were prepared in bulk by using AIBN and UV radiation as the initiator system. The polymerization temperatures were 40, 0, -25, and -50oC. The samples were fractionated by means of successive extractions with dioxane, tetrahydro-furan, and cyclohexanone, and two fractions of each sample were characterized in order to study their thermal degradation. This was carried out by conductivity measurements with the use of a differential conductimetry cell for degradations up to 0.1% and a single cell for degradations up to 0.4%. From the UV-visible spectra of equally degraded samples it is concluded that the higher the tacticity of PVC, the higher the proportion of long polyene sequences is; this behavior is independent of the conversion. The degraded samples were ozonized in order to measure the number of scissions per chain. This number was found to be low for syndiotactic samples and high for atactic samples, which is accounted for by the increased clustering of double bonds to form long polyene sequences in the more syndiotactic polymers. Previous results suggesting increased ease of propagation along syndiotactic sequences are therefore confirmed more quantitatively.