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Preparation and Thermal Behaviour of Acrylonitrile (An)/Ethyl Acrylate (EA) Copolymer and Acrylonitrile (AN)/Ethyl Acrylate (EA)/Fumaronitrile (FN) Terpolymer as Precursors for Carbon Fibre

Siti Nurul Ain Md. Jamil, Rusli Daik and Ishak Ahmad

Pertanika Journal of Science & Technology, Volume 18, Issue 2, July 2010

Keywords: Acrylonitrile, carbon fibre, copolymer, ethyl acrylate, fumaronitrile, redox polymerization, terpolymer

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Redox polymerization of acrylonitrile (AN) with ethyl acrylate (EA) and fumaronitrile (FN), as comonomer and termonomer respectively, were carried out using sodium bisulfite (SBS) and potassium persulphate (KPS) as initiators at 40°C. The actual composition of monomers in copolymers and terpolymers has been characterized by gas chromatography (GC). The effects of EA and FN on the glass transition temperature (T g) and stabilization temperature have been studied by Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC). The degradation behaviour and char yield were obtained by thermogravimetric analysis. Meanwhile, incorporation of 10 mol% of EA in homoPAN system was found to greatly reduce T g to 66°C as compared to that of the homoPAN (T g=105°C). The initial cyclization temperature (T i) was found to be higher (264°C) in comparison to that of homoPAN (246°C). In addition, the incorporation of EA was also shown to reduce the char yield of copolymer to 40%. When FN was incorporated as termonomer, the char yield of poly(AN/EA/FN) 90/4/6 increased up to 44% after the heat treatment with the lowest T i (241°C).

ISSN 0128-7680

e-ISSN 2231-8526

Article ID

JST-0190-2010

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