Heavy ion beam induced phenomena in polytetrafluoroethylene

This paper describes the results on thermal and chemical analysis of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) film stack after high-energy heavy ion beam irradiation under atmospheric fields at room temperature. After high-energy C⁶⁺ ion beam irradiation, the PTFE film stack was separated one by one, and then the various measurements such as differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) analysis and solid-state ¹⁹F magic-angle spinning (MAS) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy were performed to get information of the chemical reaction and structural change at the localized positions. By ion beam irradiation for PTFE at room temperature, it is suggested that the abnormal phenomena due to the change of morphology could be observed by DSC analysis. In the solid-state ¹⁹F-MAS-NMR spectroscopy of ion irradiated PTFE film including Bragg peak region, several new signals were observed besides the intense peak of -CF₂- at −124 ppm. The detected new signals in ion irradiated PTFE should be due to the changed chemical structures. The signals, which are assigned, to the tertiary carbon group with branching site (Y-type crosslinking site), perfluoro-propylene site and chain end methyl site were directly detected, though it was under the oxidation condition. Thus, although it was under the oxidation condition, the branching or crosslinking reaction was taken place with the chain scission in the matrix. Moreover, the branched chain length would become short, compared with EB-crosslinked PTFE. Hence, it could be suggested that the irradiation of heavy ion beam induced large amounts of intermediate species, compared with EB or γ-ray irradiation, and then, those would be reacted with each other in the localized area. Especially, in region of the Bragg peak, the ion beam induced more large amounts of intermediate species than in the other region.