Application of NIRA techniques for the determination of polymer end and functional groups

Near infrared reflectance analysis (NIRA) provides a quick and reliable method for the measurement of end and functional groups in polymers and polymeric products. Feasible applications of Technicon InfraAlyzer for the simultaneous determination of OH and COOH numbers from polyester resins, and percent nitrogen estimation in crosslinkable acrylamido derivatives of partially esterified cellulosic materials were studied. The analytical results obtained show that NIRA techniques provide accurate and precise measurement of functional and end groups from the polymer samples used for this study. In addition, the statistical data showed that the number of samples used in learning sets were adequate for the generation of reliable calibration equations.