FTIR-microscopy as a tool for the measurement of the morphology of industrial, polymeric products

Polymer chains for many polymers may pack together in a regular arrangement to form a three-dimensional crystalline phase. These ordered phases influence the mid-infrared spectrum of the polymer, giving rise to absorption features or effects that may be directly associated with the regular conformations and their packing. For example, they may simply lead to a narrowing of an absorption band as the randomness of a system decreases, they may lead to increased intensity of a band as preferred conformations increase in concentration, or they may give rise to new bands associated with intermolecular interactions. For practical purposes, these changes may be correlated with differences in polymer crystallinity or density, through band width or band intensity measurements or by application of a multivariate data analysis technique