A study of the thermal behavior of graft copolymers of wool and methyl methacrylate

Abstract

AbstractThermal behavior of the natural and chemically modified wool fibers (treated with sodium hydroxide and formic acid and reduced with sodium bisulfite and thioglycollic acid) and of the graft copolymers of natural and modified wool with methyl nethacrylate (MMA) monomer was studied using dynamic thermogravimetry in air at a heating rate of 6°C/min to 600°C. The thermograms showed three distinct regions of weight loss for all the cases. A comparison of the temperatures of various percentage decompositions reveals that the thermal stability increased slightly with chemical modification of wool as compared to natural wool. Caustic soda and sodium bisulfite probably forms more stable lanthionine linkages, whereas formic acid improves the thermal stability perphas by modifying the noncrystalline region of the fiber. In the case of natural wool after graft copolymerization with MMA, thermal stability improves up to 325°C probably owing to the formation of new crosslinks, but after 325°C the thermal stability decreases owing to early decomposition of the polymer as compared to wool fiber. Similar effects are observed in all the chemically modified fibers except in wool reduced with sodium bisulfite, where thermal stability is found to increase after grafting even at higher temperature. The thermal stability was also computed from the primary thermograms by calculating the integral procedural decomposition temperature; the results show that thermal stability increases slightly with chemical modification of wool as compared to natural wool. In the case of natural wool with graft copolymerization with MMA, the overall thermal stability decreases, because the decrease of thermal stability after 325°C seems to be more prominent than the increase in thermal stability before 325°C. The same effects are observed in all the chemically modified fibers, except for fibers reduced with sodium bisulfite, where the overall thermal stability increases slightly with increase in graft‐on.