Raman Analysis of Polyvinyl Chloride Degraded under Different Temperature Conditions

In this work, the Raman spectroscopy method was used to study changes in the composition of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) during its degradation. Traditionally, such changes are analyzed optically due to the fact that during degradation, polyene sequences of different lengths are formed in the PVC structure, which change many properties of the material, including optical ones. The Raman spectroscopy method chosen in this work is characterized by high accuracy and speed of analysis, as well as the ability to diagnose the presence of polyenes in extremely low concentrations. Undegraded PVC films and films degraded in various temperature regimes are used as study samples. It is shown that the Raman spectra of the samples can be used to analyze both the length of the formed polyenes and their length distribution. It is found that the length distribution of polyenes depends on the conditions of thermal degradation of the samples.