Polymer Interfaces Analysed on a Nanometer Scale: X-Ray and Neutron Reflectometry

Abstract

Recently the techniques of X-ray and neutron reflectometry (XR, NR) have also been applied to polymer films and interfaces. While the use of X-rays in polymeric systems is largely limited to specific cases because of a general lack of contrast between most polymers, NR can be widely applied with deuterated polymers. While the deuteration might cause for instance surface enrichment processes on itself, it can be nicely used in many cases to generate a large contrast between components. Since the resolution of the techniques is the sub-nanometer range, special care has to be taken to prepare very smooth and homogeneous polymer films. It then is possible to investigate various aspects of polymer interfaces on a nanometer scale. Several examples are discussed (see [1,2] for a general review).