Nonisothermal melt crystallization kinetics of laser-irradiated Pd/PVA nanocomposite

Abstract

In the present work, we used the ex situ casting technique to synthesize a nanocomposite (NC) of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and nanosize palladium (Pd). The Pd has a particle size in the range from 2 to 22 nm with 10 nm on average. Samples from the synthesized NC have been irradiated with different fluences ranging from 2 to 20 J/cm2 from GaAs infrared pulsed laser (5-watt power, 904 nm wavelength, 200 ns pulse duration, 1200 Hz frequency and 0.28 cm2 spot area). Nonisothermal crystallization kinetics of the synthesized NC was investigated using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) with different cooling rates. The Jeziorny and Mo approaches were applied to describe the nonisothermal analysis. Several nonisothermal kinetic parameters, such as the crystallization peak temperature (Tc ), the enthalpy of crystallization (ΔHc ), the degree of crystallinity (Xc ), the crystallization halftime (t 1/2), the Avrami exponent (n) and the activation of crystallization (Ea ) were evaluated and interpreted as a function of laser fluences. The results indicated that the incorporation Pd nanoparticles into the PVA matrix accelerate the crystallization process, while the laser radiation causes chain crosslinking that reduces the crystallinity.