A study on thermal behavior of a poly(VDF-CTFE) copolymers binder for high energy materials

This article describes a study on thermal behavior of poly(vinylidene fluoride‐chlorotrifluoroetheylene) [poly(VDF‐CTFE)] copolymers as polymeric binders of specific interest for high energy materials (HEMs) composites by thermal analytical techniques. The non‐isothermal thermogravimetry (TG) for poly (VDF‐CTFE) copolymers was recorded in air and N2 atmospheres. The results of TG thermograms show that poly(VDF‐CTFE) copolymers get degrade at lower temperature when in air than in N2 atmosphere. In the derivative curve, there was single maximum degradation peak (Tmax) indicating one‐stage degradation of poly(VDF‐CTFE) copolymers for all the samples. The other thermal properties such as glass transition temperature (Tg) and degradation temperature (Td) for poly(VDF‐CTFE) copolymers were measured by employing differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) technique. The kinetic parameters related to thermal degradation of poly(VDF‐CTFE) copolymers were investigated through non‐isothermal Kissinger kinetic method using DSC method. The activation energies for thermal degradation of poly(VDF‐CTFE) copolymers were found in a range of 218–278 kJ/mol. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci., 2013