Kinetics and mechanisms of free radical decay reactions in irradiated solids

A new second order kinetic equation is given which takes into account the fraction of free radicals which cannot react in solids at the observation temperature. This corresponds to the situation when solids irradiated at liquid nitrogen temperature are then heated to a temperature where only some of the free radicals disappear by recombination. This equation is applied to data for isotactic polypropylene, polybutadiene, linear low density polyethylene, etc. (author)