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Nanoscale measurement of the absolute mass density of polymers
Author(s) -
Watts Benjamin,
Warnicke Peter,
Pilet Nicolas,
Raabe Jörg
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
physica status solidi (a)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.532
H-Index - 104
eISSN - 1862-6319
pISSN - 1862-6300
DOI - 10.1002/pssa.201400124
Subject(s) - polymer , nanoscopic scale , absolute (philosophy) , materials science , polystyrene , measure (data warehouse) , nanotechnology , conjugated system , composite material , computer science , philosophy , epistemology , database
Recent progress in the performance of polymer electronics devices has depended heavily on detailed knowledge of the properties of the active polymer materials. While many advanced conjugated polymer materials are being synthesized, the limited quantities produced severely restrict opportunities to measure their physical properties. In particular, the absolute mass density is a basic material property that impacts on many other important properties, yet it is very difficult to measure when in limited quantity. Here, we report a method to spatially resolve the absolute mass density of polymer materials at the nanoscale and measure values for polystyrene (1028 (43) kg/m 3 ), PMMA (1140 (26) kg/m 3 ), PFB (727 (51) kg/m 3 ), and F8BT (749 (26) kg/m 3 ). We estimate that the measurement method could be applied to sample quantities less than 1 picogram.