Kinetic analysis and modeling of paper-laminated phenolic printed circuit board (PLP-PCB) pyrolysis using distributed activation energy models (DAEMs)

This work explores the pyrolysis characteristics and kinetic behavior of paper-laminated phenolic printed circuit boards (PLP-PCBs) using thermogravimetric analysis under non-isothermal linear heating programs. The initial estimation of the kinetic parameters during the pyrolysis was obtained from the analysis of the experimental data by three isoconversional kinetic models, i.e. Flynn-Wall-Ozawa (FWO) and Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose (KAS) integral methods, as well as the Friedman differential method. For all three methods, the apparent activation energy exhibited a strong dependence on the degree of the reaction conversion. To allow for the complexity of the reactions involved in the PLP-PCB pyrolysis, two distributed activation energy models (DAEMs) with a firstorder reaction function were derived by assuming the discrete and multi-Gaussian distributions for the activation energies. A six pseudo-component Gaussian DAEM was able to accurately describe the PLP-PCB pyrolysis. By applying the discrete DAEM algorithm, the pyrolysis of PLP-PCB could be precisely characterized by 37 dominating reactions.