10 - Protection in an aggressive environment

Abstract

The stabilization of polymer materials against degradation is a very important area in the polymer industry. This chapter focuses on the continuous destruction of polymer materials under environmental action and summarizes the applications and processes leading to their protection in an aggressive environment. The basic factors causing destruction under normal environmental conditions are sunlight, water (moisture), and air oxygen. In some applications polymer materials work under specific aggressive media such as solvents, chemically active gases or liquids, high energy irradiations such as UV and VUV light, electron, and ion flux. The problem of polymer stability in aggressive environments is usually solved by the application of special additives of antioxidants, fillers, and inhibitors of ageing. But antioxidant and inhibitor activity is limited and sometimes lifetime is reduced under strong aggressive environments like intensive short-wave UV light. Ion beam implantation is a process, which changes the structure of the polymer surface layer by increasing the resistance of modified polymer against aggressive environmental factors. Despite the high effectiveness of ion beam treatment for polymers, only a few applications of ion beam implantation for polymer resistance improvement are known. In such cases, other methods of preventing degradation processes become necessary, which are discussed.