Molecular weight changes induced in an anionic polydimethylsiloxane by gamma irradiation in vacuum

A previously developed mathematical model of the irradiation process that accounts for simultaneous scission and crosslinking and allows for both H- and Y-crosslinks, fitted well the measured molecular weight data. This prediction is in accordance with the experimental data obtained by 29Si-Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy (NMR) and previously reported data for commercial linear PDMS (Satti et al., 2008).