Direct Atmospheric Solid Probe Analysis mass spectrometry analysis for the understanding of polyurethane degradation under radio-oxidation

The impact of polyurethane (PU) radiolysis under oxidative conditions by Atmospheric Solid Probe Analysis (ASAP), a direct mass spectrometry analysis, was investigated. PU is among the most used copolymers due to of its wide range of formulations. As copolymer, direct analysis of this material is usually difficult without any sample preparation and by a sole analytical technique. In this work is presented the ability to detect the crude polymers, before and after oxidative degradation, by ASAP-MS technique, which benefice from the ability to ionize molecules directly from sample. Thus, the complete characterization by ASAP analysis of PU irradiated at two doses allows a good identification of degradation products for both hard and soft segments of the polymer. It has also been demonstrated that if hard segments are degraded at lower temperature than soft segments, hard segments are less sensible to irradiation than the soft ones. Finally, a first approach of the degradation mechanism for each segment under radio-oxidation has been proposed without sample preparation, in only one and unique step analysis and using only one analytical method, where usually several analytical techniques (FT-IR, UV, MS, TGA, etc.) are required.