QUANTITATIVE IR SPECTROSCOPIC ANALYSIS OF ETHYLENE-ACRYLATE COPOLYMERS

An IR spectroscopic technique for the quantitative analysis of composi tion of three ethylene (E)-acrylate copolymer systems (poly(ethylene-c o-methyl acrylate), poly(ethylene-co-butyl acrylate), poly(ethylene-co -2-ethylhexyl acrylate)) is presented. Based on a simple model which e xplicitly considers vibrational band intensities characteristic for CH and for C=O, copolymer composition may be derived from the ratio of C =O and CH integrated absorbances with a precision of +/-3 mol %. The o ptical path length of the copolymer samples which are subjected to IR analysis as pressed films need not be known. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.