Effect of Microwave Irradiation on Structure and Properties of Poly (ethylene terephthalate) (PET)

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