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Abstract
The present work looks into the aspect of thermal modifications induced in polymers by proton irradiation. The kinetics of thermal decomposition of polymers is investigated by using the thermogravimetric (TG) technique. It has been observed that the degradation of polymers is a multi-step process that involves sequential and competing processes, and obeys the Arrhenius kinetics which allows us to connect the rate constant with the absolute temperature and the activation energy. The activation energy of thermal decomposition has been calculated from the TG curves, and its variation with different irradiation doses has been derived.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the technical and the scientific staff of Hahn–Meitner Institute, Berlin for the proton irradiation. The fellowship grants to R. Mishra and S. P. Tripathy under ICTP-TRIL programme are thankfully acknowledged.