Improvement upon our previous method for auto-separating thermally stimulated current curves

In this paper we have introduced the following improvement on our previous method for auto-separating thermally stimulated current (TSC), namely both the general-order kinetic equation of a thermally stimulated process (TSP) and the real peak found by calculating the activation energy varying with the increment of peak temperature are used to replace the first-order kinetic equation and the peak point obtained from the experimental TSC curve, respectively. Using this method we have separated successfully the experimental TSC curve of polyimide film, and found that this complex curve is composed of six sub-curves in the temperature range 250-500 K, one of which obeys second-order kinetics. Moreover, by comparing the parameters obtained with the cleaning peak method and our improved method it can be confirmed that the latter is very effective. As a result we believe that this improved method is more reasonable, and describes the real physical processes in a polymer much better than before.