Simulation of Temperature Distributions Within Monomer Film During Photopolymerization

Photoinitiated polymerizations are very fast reactions, and consequently significant thermal effects are observed during the reactions. Nevertheless, isothermal conditions are necessary to measure the kinetic constants of polymerization. In the simulation of heat transfer reported in this paper, it is shown that the use of a thin film of monomer at the bottom of a DSC pan, even in the presence of an intermediate polyethylene film, is convenient if the reaction rate is not too high. For example, the temperature increase of the film does not exceed 1°C for a reaction half-time (time to reach 50% conversion) higher than 10 s when the enthalpy of polymerization is chosen as ΔH _R=115 J g^?1.