Abstract:
The application of microwave energy on polymers has got huge interest in the field of organic
chemistry. Industrial use of microwave radiation as an alternative to conventional thermal
heating has generated interest recently mainly because of the drastic reduction in the
processing time. It provides effective, selective and fast synthetic methods by heating the
molecules directly through the interaction between the microwave energy and molecular dipole
moments of the starting materials. In this research the effect of microwave irradiation on the
mechanical and thermal properties Poly (ethylene terephthalate) PET has been investigated.
PET has been treated with microwave irradiation under variety of conditions in terms of the
power and the time of microwave treatment. The structures of the untreated and treated PET has
been investigated with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), the thermal properties of
the untreated and the treated PET has been investigated using Thermo gravimetric analysis
(TGA). The effect of microwave irradiation on mechanical properties has been studied using
universal testing machine (UTM) and different spectroscopic and analytical equipment.
The analyzed result shows a small change on its tensile strength at an irradiation time of 10
and15 minutes which was due to surface modification of phenyl rings at the surface. The TGA
result shows a small reduction of melting temperature as the irradiation time increases. On the
FT-IR result also there was a slight change of molecular bonds due to the rearrangement and
loss of some particles of PET
