Effects of radiation on Polymer

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2010 in the subject Chemistry - Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, grade: 1, , course: Master of Philosophy, language: English, abstract: Over the past decade a great deal of information has been published about intrinsically conducting polymers, more commonly known as "synthetic metals". The basic interest comes from the fact that these new materials combine the physical and chemical attributes of plastics with the electrical, electronic, magnetic, and optical properties of metals or semiconductors.

Poly (vinyl chloride) (PVC) is extraordinarily useful as a commercial material. Among the thermoplastics, it ranks second only to polyolefins in total worldwide production volume. Remarkably, it has achieved this status despite its molecular instability toward heat, an instability that is much more pronounced than those of all its major competitors. In a technological sense, this difficulty has been overcome to a large degree, for otherwise the usage of PVC would never have reached its current level Commercial interest in PVC was first revealed in a number of patents independently filed in 1928 by Carbide and Carbon Chemical Corporation, Dupont and IG Farben.

From the present research studies, it is summarized that the characteristics of poly vinyl chloride [PVC] changes according to the dosage of electron beam irradiation. That is amorphous nature of PVC changes to crystalline and conjugate double bond and free radicals are formed due to the degradation. The free radicals formed due to scission process in responsible at higher energy radiation. The electrical conductivity of polyvinyl chloride after irradiation slightly increases with electron beam radiation dose. It is due to increase in crystallinity in the polyvinyl chloride after electron beam irradiation and production of free radicals due to scission or crosslinking in PVC.