One of the earliest mechanisms of the thermal degradation
of PS was proposed by Staudinger and Steinhofer.[46]
In addition to monomer, the major degradation products
consist of a mixture of saturated and unsaturated compounds,
most of which were dimer and trimer. Staudinger
and Steinhofer proposed a chain scission mechanism to
explain these products, as illustrated below for the PS
dimer. Similar scission reactions would produce the
monomer and trimer products as well