Degradation of polymers by thermal gravimetric techniques

The techniques involved in dynamic thermal gravimetric analysis are reviewed. Methods of studying overall kinetics of degradation, especially with respect to evaluation of order of reaction and overall activation energy, are outlined. Some applications to polymers such as Teflon and epoxide resins are described. Since the use of thermal gravimetric results for evaluating thermal stability raises the problem of a suitable standard for describing decomposition, some indices of thermal stability of polymers are discussed.