Abstract: The thermal degradation of chloroprene rubber/butyl methacrylate grafting copolymer ( CR-g-BMA) in air atmosphere was studied using thermo gravimetric analysis. It was found that the degradation of CR-g-BMA occurred in two steps. The characteristic initial and termination degradation tempera-tures were 571 .66 K and 754. 35 K, respectively. thirty common mechanism functions were compared with Achar' s and Coats-Redfern’s methods, the differential and integral mechanism functions for the two steps were formulated. the average activation energies of the first and second steps were 176.06 and 171 .09kJ/mol, respectively. The model of thermal degradation kinetics was proposed and the parameters of CR-g-BMA were determined.

Key words: chloroprene rubber, butyl methacrylate, grafting copolymer, thermal degradation