Terahertz spectroscopic estimation of crystallinity of poly(phenylene sulfide)

As a crystalline polymer, various properties of poly(phenylene sulfide) (PPS) depend on its crystallinity. Evaluation of crystallinity of PPS is examined by terahertz (THz) absorption spectroscopy in this research. For sheets of PPS thermally annealed differently, sharp absorption peaks appearing at 3.2 and 4.2 THz are well proportional to the crystallinity estimated by X-ray diffraction, differential scanning calorimetry, and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) absorption spectroscopy. Therefore, THz absorption spectroscopy can be a good tool for estimating the crystallinity of PPS. Especially, it is useful for thick PPS sheets, for which FTIR spectroscopy in transmission mode is difficult to apply due to the saturation of absorbance. Since THz spectroscopy and FTIR spectroscopy are complementary in the vibrations that the two methods can detect, using the two methods should be effective to improve the accuracy of estimation of crystallinity.