Cross-sectional chemical nanoimaging of composite polymer nanoparticles by infrared nanospectroscopy
CIC nanoGUNE Seminars
- Speaker
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Monika Goikoetxea, Post-doctoral Researcher, Nanooptics
- When
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2022/10/10
13:00 - Place
- nanoGUNE seminar room, Tolosa Hiribidea 76, Donostia - San Sebastian
- Add to calendar
-
iCal
**Cross-sectional chemical nanoimaging of composite polymer nanoparticles by
infrared nanospectroscopy**
Monika Goikoetxea
Post-doctoral Researcher, Nanooptics, CIC nanoGUNE
Multicomponent waterborne polymer nanoparticles are key ingredients in many
technological and industrial products, such as in coatings, adhesives and
cosmetics. The final performance properties of the composite particles depend
on their morphology and chemical composition, which in turn are the result of
complex kinetic and thermodynamic processes that occur during the
polymerization. For that reason, chemical and structural characterization of
the final polymer nanoparticles is critically important to understand the
polymerization and to improve the synthesis. However, despite of all efforts
devoted to the development of characterization techniques, the precise
determination of the morphology and particularly of the local chemical
composition of the waterborne composite polymer particles has remained elusive
so far, especially when dealing with complex morphologies. The current
challenges and limitations may be overcome by exploiting the high chemical
sensitivity together with resolution of emerging infrared nanospectroscopy
techniques.
Here we introduce Infrared scattering-type scanning near-field optical
microscopy (IR s-SNOM) and nanoscale Fourier transform infrared (nano-FTIR)
spectroscopy to study multicomponent nanostructured polymer particles and
demonstrate its excellent sensitivity to local chemical composition via
hyperspectral infrared nanoimaging and subsequent chemometric analysis. To
that end, we developed a method for preparing thin particle slices without any
embedding material, thus avoiding chemical contamination. In particular, we
studied particles composed by acrylic and fluoroacrylate monomers, finding an
unexpected composition for each of the phases that form the complex core-
shell-shell morphology, which provides unprecedented chemical insights beyond
conventional electron microscopy analysis of the same particles.