ABSTRACT
Polymer characterization can be divided into three areas: chemical structure, including composition and configuration; physical structure, including such interactive factors as degree of crystallinity, crystal structure, defects and disorder, conformation and morphology and properties, primarily physical but also chemical. This chapter summarizes traditional methods of characterization, with references to permit readers to obtain further details of both background and methods, and describes in somewhat greater detail newer methods, all with particular emphasis on techniques applicable to synthetic textiles and textile polymers. It provides an understanding of the terminology and basis for the traditional techniques; such as, for x-ray diffraction, unit cell, crystal structure, Bragg’s law, reciprocal lattice, and Ewald’s sphere. The physical structure of polymers in general and fibers in particular, occurs over a range of size scales, thus requiring a range of techniques for characterization. Characterization of the unit cell of a polymer crystal requires determination of the spatial position of all of the atoms.
