Habibu Uthman and Hamdani Saidi (2015), Grafting kinetics of 1–vinylimidazole and 1-–vinyl–2–pyrrolidone onto EB–preirradiated poly(ethylene–alt–tetrafluoroethylene), ETFE, films, Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Technology, ICFCHT 2015, Pullman Kuala Lumpur City Center Hotels & Residence, Malaysia, September 1–3

Abstract

Grafting kinetics of nitrogenous and heterocyclic 1-vinylimidazole (1-VIm) and 1-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone (1-2-V-P) onto electron beam (EB)-irradiated poly(ethylene-alt-tetrafluoroethylene), ETFE was investigated in conjunction with reaction parameters namely: crosslinker concentration, monomer concentration, reaction temperature and absorbed dose. This was achieved by the determination of the three kinetic parameters namely: initial polymerization rate (rpo), characteristic radical recombination rate (γ) and delay time (to) respectively. The variation of the rpo with absorbed dose [D and monomer concentration [M allows the determination of the order of dependence of the grafting rate (Rg) on the [D] which was to be equal to 2.23, Rg dependence on [M] was found to be equal to 3.39 respectively. Activation energy (Ea) was determined and temperature effect in the range of 50-70oC was investigated. Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FTIR) was used to confirm and monitor the grafting of poly(1-VIm/1-1-2-V-P) grafts and chemical changes that followed the grafting onto ETFE films. From the present results it was observed that by controlling and optimizing reaction parameters, a quantitative kinetics for co-grafting of 1-VIm/1-1-2-V-P onto ETFE film can be established and the degree of grafting [DG(%)] can easily be tuned.