New Aspects of Degradation in Silicone Rubber under UVA and UVB Irradiation: A Gas Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry Study

oleh: Zheng Wang, Libing Qian, Xiangyang Peng, Zhen Huang, Yue Yang, Chunqing He, Pengfei Fang

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2021-07-01

Deskripsi

In this paper, gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) and positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy (PALS) were used to probe the changes of oligomers and the polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) network in silicone rubber, after different durations of UVA/UVB irradiation. At the early stage (<300 h) of UVA/UVB irradiation, the concentration of D<inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><msub><mrow></mrow><mn>4</mn></msub></semantics></math></inline-formula>-D<inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><msub><mrow></mrow><mn>9</mn></msub></semantics></math></inline-formula> decreases. The o-Ps intensity of the extracted silicone rubber increases in the stage after UVB irradiation. These results indicate the crosslinking of oligomers into the PDMS network. After a long duration (>300 h) of UVB irradiation, D<inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><msub><mrow></mrow><mn>4</mn></msub></semantics></math></inline-formula> was generated and the lifetime of <inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><msub><mi>τ</mi><mn>3</mn></msub></semantics></math></inline-formula> also increased, indicating the rupture of the Si-O bond in the PDMS network. These two aging processes were termed the post curing process and the chain session process. The new finding was that UVA could only induce the post curing process; UVB causes the rupture of the chemical bond in silicone rubber. Photons of UVB could break the C-H bond, and then trigger the backbiting decomposition of PDMS, breaking the Si-O bond, while the photons of UVA cannot. The fact that D<inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><msub><mrow></mrow><mn>4</mn></msub></semantics></math></inline-formula> was generated after UVB irradiation can be used to evaluate the UVB stability of silicone rubber in the future.