Vibrational spectroscopy studies of interdiffusion in polymer laminates and diffusion of water into polymer membranes.

Confocal Raman microspectroscopy has been used to study the interdiffusion in polymer laminates at the interfacial region between the constituent polymer layers. The effects of the polymer molecular weight, annealing temperature, and annealing time have been studied. Three different laminates with various PMMA molecular weights have been examined, with a view to studying the hydrogen bonding interaction between the alcohol and ester groups of PVOH and PMMA layers. It has been found that v(C=O) band shows no apparent frequency shift due to hydrogen bonding. However, considerable broadening of the v(C=O) band has been observed at the interfacial region. In order to study the effect of annealing temperature, a PAN/PVOH laminate has been chosen. It has been shown that the degree of hydrogen bonding is reduced if the polymer laminate is annealed at a higher temperature than the glass transition temperature of both of the constituent polymers. No significant change has been observed after annealing the laminate for various lengths of time. It has been shown that Raman imaging and Raman microscopy can provide invaluable information about the molecular distribution and chemical interactions of various phases in polymer blends. The diffusion of pure water and also water from some ionic solutions into sulphonated polyetherethersulphone/polyethersulphone, SPEES/PES has been studied using Fourier transform infrared-attenuated total reflectance, FTIR-ATR spectroscopy. The effects of sulphonation level, annealing temperature, ionic concentration, and presence of some ionic species on diffusion of water into SPEES/PES has been examined. In addition the sorption and desorption processes, and diffusion into a laminate of SPEES/PES-PVOH has also been studied. It was found that the above diffusion processes are not Fickian nor Case II and is best described by a dual-mode sorption model.The diffusion coefficient for H2O in various cationic solutions into SPEES/PES has a descending order of Li[+] > Cs[+] > Na[+] > K[+]. Increasing the ionic concentration results in a decrease in the water diffusion coefficient. It was found that an increase in annealing temperature caused the diffusion curve to become more sigmoidal in shape with a decreases in diffusion coefficient.