Thermal Degradation Studies of Poly(2-ethyl hexyl acrylate) in the Presence of Nematic Liquid Crystals

The thermal degradation behavior of Poly(2-ethyl hexyl hcrylate) (Poly(2-EHA)), blended with a commercially available nematic liquid crystal (LC) mixture, was investigated by thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA). Different heating rates, ranging from 5 to 200 °C/min, were applied under an inert atmosphere. Based on the TGA results, activation energies (E(α)) at different conversion rates (α) were determined using three integral isoconversion methods: Flynn-Wall-Ozawa (FWO), Tang, and Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose (KAS). It can be noticed that the global evolution of these activation energies was the same for the three models. The coefficient of determination R(2) presented values generally higher than 0.97. Using these models, the E(α) value for the LC remains constant at 64 kJ/mol for all conversions rates. For the polymer Poly(2-EHA), applying the Tang and FWO models, the activation energy presents a variation ranging from 80 kJ/mol, for conversion α = 0.1, to 170 kJ/mol, for α = 0.9. For the third model (KAS), this energy varies between 80 and 220 kJ/mol in the same range of α.