Environmental conditions play a critical role on polymer lifetime, and traditional degradation study takes time ranging from hours to days due to limited light intensity. CDS’s Photoprobe is using free-space focusing technology and improves the light intensity to 800 mW/mm2 from 260 nm to 400 nm wavelength, which reduces the time on weather-induced degradation study down to minutes.
A CDS 6200 Pyroprobe equipped with Drop-In-Sample Chamber (DISC) and Photoprobe was used, and an autosampler module was installed to automate the weathering-pyrolysis sequence. 11 µg of polystyrene was irradiated in the DISC with the presence of air as reactant gas at a flow rate of 10 ml/min. The volatiles generated from the photo-reaction were trapped on the analytical trap, and then desorbed to the GC/MS after the photo reaction is completed. The remaining polymer was pyrolyzed at 600°C as the last step. A DISC quartz tube was used as the sample vessel.
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