Formation and structure of amorphous carbon char from polymer materials

Amorphous carbonaceous char produced from burning polymer solids has insulating properties that make it valuable in thermal protection and fire-retardant systems. A pyrolytic molecular dynamics simulation method is devised to study the transformation of the local microstructure from virgin polymer to a dense, disordered char. Release of polymer hydrogen is found to be critical to allow the system to collapse into a highly coordinated char structure. Mechanisms of the char formation process and the morphology of the resulting structures are elucidated.