Dialkyl peroxides

We offer a broad range of dialkyl peroxides, including alkyl-aryl and diaryl peroxides, under the well-known trademarks of Trigonox® and Perkadox®.

Structure
Dialkyl peroxides have the general structure RO-OR₁ wherein R and R₁ mostly represent alkyl and/or aryl groups.

Dialkyl peroxides are a thermally stable class of organic peroxides. The O-O bond breaks at relatively high temperatures and free radicals are formed; RO· and ·OR₁.

Depending on the type of dialkyl peroxide and reaction conditions cleavage of the peroxide bond may be followed by β-scission, chain transfer and other reactions.

Applications
Dialkyl peroxides are used as free radical initiators in the polymerization of various monomers (e.g. LDPE) as well as in the crosslinking of elastomers and thermoplastics. Some of them are also used for visbreaking polypropylene (CR-PP).

Half-life
The most important characteristic of an organic peroxide is its half-life. It is the time required to reduce the original amount at a given temperature by 50%. 

For polymerization initiators the half-life is determined by differential scanning calorimetry-thermal activity monitoring (DSC-TAM) of a dilute solution of a dialkyl peroxide in monochlorobenzene. Dialkyl peroxides are available in a wide range of activities. 1 hour half-life temperatures lie in the range of 132-141 °C.

Kinetic data of our dialkyl peroxides can be found in the AkzoNobel product catalog "Initiators and Reactor Additives for Thermoplastics" which can be downloaded from this page.

Please refer to our brochure "Crosslinking elastomers and thermoplastics" for half-life temperatures of our crosslinking peroxides. These have been determined in different polymers using the Arrhenius equation.

On request we also provide decomposition mechanisms for some of our dialkyl peroxides. We also offer a number of cyclic peroxides.