New developments in the simultaneous measurement system of wide-angle and small-angle x-ray scatterings and vibrational spectra for the static and dynamic analyses of the hierarchical structures of polymer solids

A simultaneous measurement system of wide-angle X-ray diffraction (WAXD), small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and Raman or transmission-type infrared spectroscopy was developed by us. Its purposes is to clarify the static and dynamic structural changes of polymer materials subjected to the various external condition changes. Some examples described here include the study of the stretch-induced reorientation phenomenon of a-axially-oriented polyethylene, the study of structural change in photo-induced solid-state polymerization reaction of muconic acid ester monomer crystal, the study of the two-stage high-temperature phase transitions of aliphatic nylons, the study of stress-induced crystalline phase transition of an oriented poly(tetramethylene terephthalate) sample and its relation to the higher-order structural change, and the study of structural regularization process of poly(L-lactic acid) in the isothermal crystallization of the meso phase. These case studies in the clarification of hierarchical structural changes of polymer materials have proven that the simultaneous measurement systems can be useful to examine the structural changes in polymer systems. (author)