Study on properties of photo-oxidation degradation of polyethylene films in existence of PEG400

With the analyses of the intrinsic viscosity, the content of gel and carboxyl, and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, the photo-oxidation degradation process of five polyethylene films containing 8%, 5%, 1%, 0.1%, 0% (mass fraction) PEG400 were analyzed respectively in the artificial accelerated climate. The morphologies of polyethylene films containing 1% PEG400 before and after degradation were studied with the Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The results showed that the photo-oxidation reactions process of the polyethylene in films were accelerated by the PEG400, it made the macromolecules of polyethylene chain cross linking or rupture and produced the carbonyl and carboxyl in the molecule chains. With the content of PEG400 at 1%, the polyethylene film had the best degradation effect, the intrinsic viscosity of its polyethylene was decreased from 67.6 Pa·s to 34.9 Pa·s after irradiation 60 days at the experiment condition, the content of gel and carboxyl were 5.84% and 1.29% respectively.