Kinetics analysis of degradation of polynorbornene containing aryl or hetaryl azo dye

The Vyazovkin model-free method were applied to study non-isothermal degrdn. of an aryl and hetaryl azo dye-contg. polynorbornene using a differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) technique. The samples were heated in nitrogen, with heating rates in the range 5-50 K min-1. The isoconversional method of Vyazovkin was used to det. the variation of the activation energy for degrdn. with temp., E α(T). The values of E α(T) were found to be almost independent of temp. The results of isoconversional methods used suggest that the transition follows a single-step kinetics reaction mechanism.