Thermal Degradation Behavior and Kinetics of 3D Porous Polycarbonate Monoliths

The thermal degradation behavior and kinetics are important to understand the nature of polymers. In this work, the thermal degradation behavior and kinetics of polycarbonate (PC) monoliths with a three dimension (3D) continuous interconnected porous structure is investigated. Thermogravimetric analysis reveals that the thermal stability of the PC monoliths shows a significant reduction compared to pristine PC due to its 3D porous structure, which drastically increases the heating surface area during the thermal degradation process. An interesting second degradation stage at 480-550 degrees C is observed for PC monoliths from the barrier effect formed by the collapse and coalescence of the porous structure at high temperature, which is further confirmed by volatile and solid char analyses. The kinetic analysis suggests that the PC monolith shows a low degradation activation energy (E ) at the first degradation stage, which increases rapidly and goes beyond the E of pristine PC at the second degradation stage.