Effect of γ-irradiation on thermally stimulated depolarization current spectra of polyethylene-grafted-poly(Acrylic acid)

The graft copolymerization process of polyethylene (PE) with acrylic acid is performed using a ⁶⁰Co-gamma irradiator, and the samples are irradiated at different doses, 30, 50, 70 and 100 kGy with a dose rate of 0.55 Gy/s. Global thermally stimulated discharge current (TSDC) spectrum of irradiated and non-irradiated PE-g-AAc has been investigated from RT to ∼ 440K. The TSDC spectrum of non-irradiated PE-g-AAc exhibited two relaxation processes. The first process is located at ∼ 329 K, and the second one is at ∼390 K. These processes are called dipolar and space charge relaxation, i.e. α- and ρ-relaxation, respectively. On the other hand, the position of these processes is shifted towards a higher temperature for irradiated samples. The activation energy for α-relaxation process of non-irradiated samples is ∼ 0.21 eV, while for irradiated samples, it is 0.34 eV. The thermal sampling technique (TS) has been applied to decompose the global TSDC spectrum of all samples into its elementary peaks. The molecular parameters, such as activation energy (E_a), pre-exponential factor (τ ₀), enthalpy (ΔH), entropy (ΔS) and Gibbs free energy (ΔG), are estimated for all samples. The compensation phenomenon has been verified for all samples in different ways, such as plotting ln τ ₀ against E_a or entropy versus enthalpy.