Thermal Degradation Study of Polymerization of Monomeric Reactants (PMR) Polyimides

Abstract

A novel PMR polyimides (TMBZ-15) based on substituted benzidines is examined and compared to state-of-the-art PMR-15. The mechanism for the thermal decomposition of two specific PMR polyimides is obtained using TG/FTIR/MS techniques. In order to verify the pathway of polyimide degradation, a pyrolysis/GC-MS technique was employed to evaluate the organic degradation products, particularly the larger components that are destroyed in traditional TG/MS. A proposed degradation mechanism involves two main stages of decomposition, each of which produce a variety of products. The first group includes aromatic hydrocarbons, aromatic amines and nitriles, which correspond to partial fragments of polymer chains. The second group consists largely of fluorene, naphthalene and phenanthrene, which are attributed to the isomerization, rearrangements and cyclizations of the aforementioned pyrolyzates at high temperature.