DISPERSIVE AND FOURIER-TRANSFORM NEAR-INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY OF POLYMERIC MATERIALS

Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy has been extensively and successfully used in food industries, but it has never been widely used in the che mical industry or chemical laboratories. For process and quality contr ol measurements, NIR spectroscopy, with the development of new, rugged , reliable techniques, opens the possibility of rapid, non-destructive multicomponent analysis. Applications using chemometric methods are n umerous, but NIR spectra of polymers also contain information on const itution, conformation, crystallinity, intermolecular and intramolecula r interactions. Some absorbance bands can be directly used to monitor chemical reactions, water content or crystallinity. NIR spectroscopy, which requires little or no sample preparation, presents a great poten tial to improve our understanding of polymeric materials. Some example s of process control determination of moisture content and changes of crystallinity monitored by Fourier transform NIR, will be briefly pres ented.