Determination of scission, crosslinking and branching parameters of electron beam irradiated methacrylate-acrylamide copolymer

The aim of this work was to investigate the impact of electron beam irradiation at different dose rates on the molecular structure of linear methacrylate-acrylamide copolymer. In the first part, the radiation chemical yields of scission (Gs) and crosslinking (Gx) have been determined after irradiation for various initial molecular weights CL1 (40 000 g/mol), CL2 (90 000 g/mol) and CL3 (425 000 g/mol). Based on this calculation, solvent (ethanol) was found to increase the impact of irradiation especially at low concentration of copolymer. In the second part, the presence of branching in samples before and after e-beam irradiation was explored, and branching calculation was performed.