Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) has been a widely utilized tool in both industry and academia for imaging material surfaces with nanoscale resolution. Conventional infrared spectroscopy (IR) is an effective tool for chemical analysis, but optical diffraction limits its spatial resolution to the scale of many microns. When an IR source is coupled to an AFM, the nanoscale AFM tip is used as the absorbance detector, resulting in an AFM-IR technique that breaks the diffraction limit associated with conventional IR spectroscopy. Today’s polymer blends and composites are more complex than ever, leading to challenges in characterizing the distribution of different components at the nanoscale. In this talk, we will focus on the polymer characterization applications of nanoscale IR spectroscopy. These applications include: quantifying the chemical content of blended polymers on the nanoscale, high spatial resolution imaging and spectroscopy of polymer blends, differentiating amorphous and crystalline polymer domains, and identifying nanoscale polymer contaminants.  <br/>

Nanoscale infrared spectroscopy for the chemical characterization of polymer systems

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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