Influence of the thermal history on dielectric properties of poly(vinyl chloride)

In this paper, we report dielectric permittivity and loss of poly (vinyl chloride) samples that have received three different thermal treatments: (a) as received, (b) quenched from 110°C to 20°C and (c) slow cooled at 5°C/h. There are several observations: first, the secondary (β) loss peak‐is not representative of a simple mechanism of transition, in agreement with results of other authors (10), second, in the glass transition zone, there are clearly two peaks (α1 and α2)—α1, is a typical peak of an amorphous glass transition; the second, α2, has possibly a crystalline origin—and, third (and the most interesting fact), there is an increase of the loss tangent in the intermediate zone between α and β peaks showing a new relaxational peak with high activation energy (70 Kcal/mole), in agreement with dynamic mechanical results (6).