New Analytical Methods for Evaluating the Degradation of Polymeric Materials

For research into the degradation of polymeric materials, it is very important to acquire information concerning the depth distribution of chemical structures and functional groups in polymeric materials. Two new methods for acquiring this information are obliquely cutting - infrared (IR) spectroscopy and derivatization - X-ray microanalysis (XMA). The former was developed to measure the chemical structure distributions while the latter was developed to measure the distributions of 0.1%-order functional groups in polymeric materials with depth resolutions of the order of microns. Both methods were applied to the degradation studies of coating films, rubbers, plastics, etc. Consequently, it was confirmed that both methods are extremely useful for research on the degradation mechanisms of polymeric materials.