Model of polymer destruction under the action of superthermal atomic oxygen

This work examines existing approaches to simulation of polymer materials destruction processes under the action of superthermal oxygen atoms with respect to the conditions of the near-Earth space. The parameters of the reactions between hyperthermal oxygen atoms and a polyimide monomer, leading to the formation of volatile products such as CO2, CO and OH have been calculated using the density functional based tight-binding (DFTB) method and molecular dynamics method. The parameters obtained with two methods were compared.