The two-step stabilization of a thoroughly characterized PAN homopolymer was studied by various methods including thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), evolved gas analysis (EGA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), oxygen microanalysis and theoretical energy calculations. Stabilization was carried out with pre-treatment in inert atmosphere, and the reactions taking
A polyacrylonitrile (PAN) homopolymer and a copolymer with methyl acrylate (MA) were analyzed by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) in order to establish a method for the kinetic analysis of the stabilization reaction steps during heat treatment. The application of a program rarely used for the study of the chemical transformation of PAN and its copolymers resulted in five separate steps, which can be assigned with large probability to various cyclization and oxidation reactions. A more exact identification of the reactions need further measurements and considerations. Overlapping peaks appearing in the DSC traces were deconvoluted and then quantitatively analyzed to obtain kinetic parameters. The kinetics of the processes were described by the Kissinger model. The model could be fitted well to four of the five processes indicating that these belong to individual reactions of the first order. The parameters obtained agree well with the few values published in the literature up to now. The results have large practical relevance, since the kinetic parameters obtained can be used in the preparation of intermediates and for the optimization of the stabilization process.
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