Radiation induced graft copolymerization of acrylamide onto poly (3-hydroxybutyrate)

the graft copolymer poly (3-hydroxybutyrate)-g- polyacrylamide[p (hb-g-aam)] was synthesized by radiation induced graft copolymerization of acrylamide onto poly (3-hydroxybutyrate). the study was conducted by the simultaneous irradiation method. the structure of [p (hb-g-aam)] was identified by fourier transform infrared (ftir) spectroscopy. thermal behavior of the graft copolymer was also studied by thermal gravimetric analysis (tga) and differential scanning calorimetry (dsc). according to the results, ftir studies showed new signals (stretching-n-h) as an important evidence of grafting. the grafting degree, determined by atg, was 10% and changes in thermodynamic parameter obtained from the dsc were detected. such changes show a decrease in crystallinity and an increase in the glass transition temperature. these results demonstrate that the gamma radiation-induced graft copolymerization reaction of acrylamide onto phb was successively achieved.