DYNAMIC X-RAY DIFFRACTOMETER FOR MEASURING RHEO-OPTICAL BEHAVIOR OF CRYSTALS IN POLYMER SOLIDS

A dynamic x-ray diffraction technique, employed to follow the responses of polymer crystals - one of the structural units of crystalline, high polymeric materials - to mechanical excitation of sinusoidal strain induced to bulk specimen is described. The descriptions for such responses are made in terms of the in-phase and out-of-phase components of the diffracted intensity by the crystals. From these, one may obtain the change in orientation of reciprocal lattice vector and deformation of lattice spacing of specific crystal planes with the change in the external periodic strain. The photoelectric switching circuits are described which repetitively activate four sets of scalers to count the continuously fed signals of the detected x-ray at particular strain phase intervals for each. The dynamic diffraction by the crystals can be evaluated by comparing the accumulated intensities among the four scalers. © 1968 The American Institute of Physics.