Abstract
The degradation of polyacrylonitrile in dimethylformamide (DMF) at 90°C has been measured by a viscometric method. It has been shown that the degradation of the polymer is induced by the reaction with dimethylamine in DMF and that the rate of the chain scission reaction is approximately expressed as ds/dt=k (sf-s), where s is the average number of broken links per one molecule of the original polymer, sf, the number of the broken bond at the end of the reaction and k, a constant. The apparent activation energy of the reaction was 10.1kcal/mol. Discussions have been given on the mechanism of the chain scission reaction.
