Chemical analysis of individual nanoscopic objects has always been a challenge. Molecular spectroscopy can provide rich chemical information, but with poor spatial resolution, whereas electron microscopy affords high spatial resolution, but produces little chemical information. The AFM-IR technique emerged recently combines AFM with IR and enables chemical analysis at sub-100 nm scale, which can provide structural information not assessable to other techniques. Here for the first time we establish a quantitative method by the AFM-IR technique, and show that the rigid cores (~100 nm size) of the rubber particles in a commercial grade high impact polypropylene (HIPP), an important material with complicated morphological structure, mainly compose of polypropylene rather than polyethylene, which contradicts the previous conclusion, established on the basis of electron microscopy and electron diffraction analyses, demonstrating the unique capability of the novel method.<br/>

Investigation of nanodomain composition in high-impact polypropylene by AFM-IR

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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