Abstract
The thermally stimulated discharge current (TSDC) technique was used to study the dipolar relaxation mechanism present in Poly(vinyl chloride-co-vinylacetate-co-2-hydroxypropyl acrylate) PVVH, Poly(methyl methacrylate) PMMA and their blends. TSDC global spectra of PVVH/PMMA polyblends exhibited two relaxation processes, indicating that the two polymers were not completely compatible with each other. Thermal sampling technique was used to investigate the breadth of the glass transition temperature covering the α-relaxation in each polymer. Each global spectrum was resolved into its elementary processes and was characterized by using a single relaxation time and an activation energy. These characteristics can be explained in terms of cooperative motions (dipole-dipole interactions) corresponding to long-range conformational changes, characteristic of α-relaxation. The TSDC theory was modified using dipole-dipole interaction effects. The α-relaxation was analyzed in terms of the Arrhenius relaxation times by using an iterative technique. Linearity was found to exist between the activation energy and the logarithm of the pre-exponential factor of the α-relaxation, confirming the validity of the compensation laws. KCI Citation Count: 4