Interpretation of Infrared Dichroism in Axially Oriented Polymers

Abstract

Although the actual distribution of chain directions in a partially oriented polymer cannot be determined from observations of infrared dichroism it is desirable to express the results in terms of a plausible model. A general relation between dichroic ratio and the parameter describing any model distribution is derived and applied to a number of suggested distributions. None are found to give plausible density functions for chain directions and a model based on the orientation of crystallites in a stretched polymer is suggested as a more suitable representation.