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In the last decades, polymeric materials have found their way from the research lab to virtually any application of modern materials, ranging from medical to automotive and from construction to children's toys and packaging.
Polymer additives and safety
Polymeric materials are often of organic origin and consists mainly of light elements such as carbon and hydrogen. Non-organic elements are routinely added to plastics during manufacture to enhance or suppress specific properties, some of which can be hazardous or carcinogenic to human and wildlife. The mix of compounds in plastics requires strictly controlling during manufacture in order to comply with an increasing number of national and international safety regulations.
Environment
Plastics manufacturers therefore require precise and repeatable measurements of such additives, stabilizers and catalysts. Recent advances in X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy have helped provide polymer and plastics manufacturers with better process control, higher cost efficiency and a much clearer overview of their environmental impact.
For X-ray diffraction experiments the composition of light elements of plastics means that they have a low absorption of X-rays and thus a high penetration depth into the material investigated. For this reason polymers are measured in transmission geometries.
PANalytical's solutions for plastics and polymers
PANalytical offers several solutions for plastics and polymers research and industry.
Additive and filler analysis
In industry, X-ray fluorescence spectrometry analysis is one of the most respected techniques for elemental analysis of catalysts, various pigments, flame-retardants, (UV)-stabilizers, and additives that are based on elements such as copper, zinc, iron, titanium, bromine, phosphorus and antimony.
Fast and easy
In particular, XRF spectroscopy provides important advantages compared with other more time-consuming or even destructive analytical techniques. With modern XRF spectrometers, e.g. our Axios-Poly, measurements are usually performed automatically and typically in just a few minutes.
Optimizing the control of polymer behavior
Application techniques for diffraction experiments on solid polymeric materials, such as phase identification and texture, can best be performed on an X'Pert PRO MPD diffractometer equipped with a transmission stage with a possibility to rotate the sample, often prepared as a thin foil, around its surface normal. In this way, information about diffraction planes in both the equatorial and the axial direction can be derived. This information is important for property control.
Polymers can also be investigated by small angle X-ray scattering. Depending on the state of the polymer (dissolved or solid) the material can be characterized according to parameters like size, shape and internal structure.
