IN-LINE QUALITY CONTROL OF POLYMER NANOCOMPOSITES USING NEAR-INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY

Layered silicates as nanoscale fillers have a great potential in improving polymer material properties Depending on the composite structure (agglomerated, intercalated or exfoliated) a significantly higher level of reinforcement can be achieved with a very small amount of filler The composite properties are usually characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), tensile tests and microscopic methods (e g transmission electron microscopy) Apart from the fact that these methods are very time consuming and cost-intensive, they are off-line methods and hence not suitable for industrial use A new approach is the in-line characterization of nanocomposite quality using Near-Infrared spectroscopy (NIR) The presented results show a direct correlation between the nanocomposite quality determined by XRD and tensile tests and the data analyzed from in-line NIR measurements Furthermore, NIR technique and chemometric analysis allow real-time, quantitative information about nanocomposite quality during processing