Physical and chemical response of 70 MeV carbon ion irradiated Kapton-H polymer

Physical and chemical responses of 70 MeV carbon ion irradiated Kapton-H polymer were studied by using UV-visible, FTIR and XRD techniques. The ion fluences ranging from 9.3 × 10¹¹−9 × 10¹³ ions cm⁻² were used. Recorded UV-visible spectra clearly showed a decrease in absorption initially with fluence, but for the higher fluences it showed a recovery characteristic. A decrease in band-gap energy of 0.07 eV was observed. The FTIR analysis indicated the high resistance to radiation induced degradation of polymer. The diffraction pattern of Kapton-H indicates that this polymer is semi-crystalline in its nature. In case of irradiated one, there was an average increase of crystallite size by 20%, but diffuse pattern indicates that there was a decrease in crystallinity, which may be attributed to the formation of complex structure induced by the cross-linking of the polymeric chains.