Synthesis and characterization of a novel isocoumarin-derived polymer and the investigation of its thermal decomposition kinetics

Abstract

A novel isocoumarin-derived polymer, poly(2-(isocoumarin-3-yl)-2-oxoethyl methacrylate) (poly(ICEMA)), was synthesized by free radical polymerization. A spectral characterization was per-formed with FTIR, 1H and 13C-NMR spectroscopies. The glass transition temperature of poly(ICEMA) was measured to be 161.69 °C by DSC. The initial decomposition temperatures obtained from TGA showed a change in the positive direction from 256.59 to 286.10 °C as the heating rate increased to 20 °C/min. The thermal decomposition activation energies of poly(ICEMA) in the conversion range of 7-19% were found to be 136.12 and 134.83 kJ/mol by the Flynn-Wall-Ozawa and Kissinger models, re-spectively. In addition, various integral models, such as the Coats-Redfern, Tang, Madhusudanan and Van Krevelen models, were used to determine the thermal decomposition mechanism of poly(ICEMA), which showed that it proceeded at the optimum heating rate of 5 ºC/min over the D1 one-dimensional dif-fusion-type deceleration mechanism.