Investigation of the radical polymerization kinetics using DSC and mechanistic or isoconversional methods

In this research, an effort was undertaken to investigate radical polymerization kinetics using experimental data from DSC measurements and mechanistic or isoconversional models. Polymerization of a polar monomer, namely 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate in the presence of benzoyl peroxide initiator was studied. The variation of the effective activation energy with conversion was directly interpreted in terms of the physical phenomena taking place during the reaction in a microscale. Both isothermal and non-isothermal DSC data were employed and the effect of diffusion-controlled phenomena on the reaction kinetics at different conversion regimes was assessed. Finally, the effect of the presence of nanofiller on polymerization kinetics and the activation energy values were estimated and correlated to physical phenomena taking place during polymerization.