A lifetime determination strategy for degraded polymers through early-stage three-dimensional fluorescence imaging

Abstract

Lifetime prediction is critically important to assure the durability and safety of the polymeric materials. However, the generally applied prediction strategy was mostly based on the mechanical properties for polymers, suffering from uncertain variations during the measurements and large consumption of specimens. Herein, we have presented a lifetime determination strategy for degraded polymers through early-stage three-dimensional fluorescence imaging. Taking polypropylene (PP) as an example, the fluorescence volume for the degraded sites of polymers has been quantified based on probe-labelled imaging process, and this volume was proposed as a spatio-temporal indicator for the microstructural variations during degradation. We have established a correlation between fluorescence volume for the microstructure and Young’s modulus for the performances of degraded PP films. Both the lifetime and the time to failure for the degraded samples could be estimated, and the remaining time to failure (tTTF) could be acquired by inputting the data of fluorescence volume (V): tTTF = – 145.66 – 4.29 lnV (T = 110 ℃). Therefore, we have provided a sensitive and cost-effective strategy for the lifetime determination of polymers. It is believed that the proposed strategy would be effectively applied for the lifetime prediction for other polymeric materials in practical applications.