Thermal behaviour of glycidyl methacrylate homopolymers and copolymers

The paper describes the effect of molecular mass and copolymer composition on thermal behaviour of homopolymers and copolymers of glycidyl methacrylat e and methyl methacrylate. The polymerisation was done by using group trans fer polymerization (GTP) and free radical techniques. A multistep decomposi tion was observed in polymers prepared by free radical technique indicating the presence of weak linkages in the backbone. Copolymers prepared by GTP had fewer weak sites and degraded in single step by a random chain scission .