The fact that polymers crystallize only partially and exhibit a nanoscopic semicrystalline morphology largely determines their macroscopic properties. During crystallization from the melt thin crystalline lamellae, separated by amorphous layers, form. Both have a typical thickness of the order of 10nm. In lateral direction the lamellar crystals can be much larger.While microscopic techniques like transmission electron microscopy or scanning force microscopy can give detailed qualitative insights about this semicrystalline morphology, small angle x-ray scattering is able to give representative quantitative information about the structure on the nanoscale, obtained from an average over a macroscopic sample volume. Starting from the assumption of a weakly ordered lamellar stack model, the typical analytical approach is based on calculating the correlation function or its second derivative, the interface distribution function, by direct Fourier inversion of the scattering data.<br/>In this tutorial I will review and explain these established methods of analysis and the corresponding experiments, and in addition introduce a recent extension which allows a quantitative modelling of the interface distribution function. In this way full information about the semicrystalline morphology can be obtained including not only the average thickness of crystalline and amorphous layers but also the widths of the corresponding distributions. Selected examples will be presented.<br/>

Small angle X-ray scattering for morphological analysis of semicrystalline polymers: Modeling of the interface distribution function

249th National Meeting (2015)

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