Studies on thermal degradation kinetics of thermal and UV cured N-(4-hydroxy phenyl) maleimide derivatives

•UV cure materials are more thermally stable than the thermally cured materials.•Cyanate ester functionalization offers better thermal stability.•The Ea values for Poly NVPs are low compared to other materials investigated.•The UV cured materials showed higher Ea values than the thermally cured materials. The results of the studies concerning the thermal and photo initiated copolymerization of N-(4-acryloyloxy phenyl) maleimide (AX), N-(4-methacryloyloxy phenyl) maleimide (MAX) and N-(4-cyanato phenyl) maleimide (CNX) with N-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone (NVP) were presented. The structures of all the copolymers prepared were confirmed by FTIR studies. The thermogravimetric studies of both the thermal and UV cured materials indicated that the UV cured materials were comparatively thermally more stable than the thermally polymerized materials during thermal degradation. Of all the materials investigated, liquid composition having NVP and CNX cured by UV irradiation showed better thermal stability. The degradation kinetic studies using Flynn–Wall–Ozawa, Vyazovkin and Friedman methods showed that the activation energies (Ea) for the thermal degradation of polymeric materials cured by UV irradiation were slightly higher than the Ea values calculated for the thermally polymerized materials.