Techniques of differential scanning calorimetry for quantification of low contents of amorphous phases

Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) is one of the most frequently used techniques for analyzing small concentrations of amorphous phases in a crystalline matrix. In recent years novel enhanced DSC approaches have been intensively looked for to improve parameters such as sensitivity, accuracy, and detection limit of the technique. Low levels of amorphous phases can be quantitatively determined in DSC by measuring the heat capacity change associated with the glass transition. In this short review the potentials provided by the HyperDSC and StepScan DSC techniques are discussed. Examples illustrate the advantages and disadvantages of the techniques and compare their abilities to detect small glass transitions and determine low contents of amorphous phases in samples which are mostly crystalline.     

StepScan DSC

StepScan DSC technique was used for the study of the glass transition phenomenon. This method allows relatively good monitoring of reversing and non-reversing processes, and thus is very useful tool for glass transition studies of wide type of glass-forming materials, including inorganic glasses as well as organic polymers. In this work, experience with the StepScan DSC technique is summarized. Some interesting results of its application are presented, such as determination of glass transition temperature independent on thermal history of glass, discovered relationship between the slope of temperature dependence of C _p in T _g, and Angel’s index of fragility and estimation of viscosity glass transition temperature, T _g,η.     

Nanoscale cooperativity on a series of statistical methacrylates copolymers with electron donor–acceptor pendant groups

Standard and StepScan DSC studies have been performed on a series of statistical methacrylate copolymers with electron-donor and electron-acceptor pendant groups that form intramolecular electron transfers. From standard DSC analysis we concluded that glass transition temperature slowly increased with increasing electron-acceptor monomeric moiety ratio up to 0.5 in the main chain. Using StepScan DSC method we calculated the size and volume of cooperative rearranging region as well mean temperature fluctuation at glass transition temperature. It was estimated also the average number of monomer units in the cooperative rearranging region. All parameters were calculated according to the method proposed by Donth based on Heat Capacity Spectroscopy. The results show that the presence of intermonomeric electron transfers decreased the chain mobility, as well as the cooperativity of relaxation processes of these structures in the glass transition range. This is reflected by minimal values of these parameters around 0.4 ratio of copolymer composition. Such behavior is similar to that of crosslinked or confined systems (e.g., nanocomposites, thin films) that have reduced chain mobility.     

Glass transition and enthalpy relaxation of ethylene glycol and its aqueous solution

Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and cryomicroscopy were employed to investigate the glass transition and enthalpy relaxation behaviors of ethylene glycol (EG) and its aqueous solution (50% EG) with different crystallization percent. Isothermal crystallization method was used in devitrification region to get different crystallinity after samples quenched below glass transition temperature. The DSC thermograms upon warming showed that the pure EG has a single glass transition, while the 50% EG solution has two if the solution crystallized partially. It is believed that the lower temperature transition represents the glass transition of bulk amorphous phase of EG aqueous solution glass state, while the higher one is related to ice inclusions, whose mobility is restricted by ice crystal. Cryomicroscopic observation indicated that the EG crystal has regular shape while the ice crystal in 50% EG aqueous solution glass matrix has no regular surface. Isothermal annealing experiments at temperatures lower than T_g were also conducted on these amorphous samples in DSC, and the results showed that both the two amorphous phases presented in 50% EG experience enthalpy relaxation. The relaxation process of restricted amorphous phase is more sensitive to annealing temperature.     

Enthalpy relaxation and fragility in polychlorinated biphenyls

We employ temperature modulated DSC (TMDSC) to determine the dependence of the fictive temperature on cooling rate for a series of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB). From the slopes of semi-logarithmic plots of cooling rate vs. fictive temperature, the latter normalized by the fictive temperature for an arbitrary cooling rate, we determine the enthalpic fragilities. Despite significant differences in glass transition temperature and chemical structure (specifically chlorine content), the PCB have the same fragility. The value of the fragility determined using TMDSC is consistent with the fragility previously determined using dielectric relaxation spectroscopy.     

Calorimetric Studies on Enthalpy Relaxation in Maltitol Glass Transition Based on Phenomenological Models

To investigate the enthalpy relaxation behavior of maltitol glass system, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was used to obtain the specific heat capacity[C_p(T)] near the glass transition temperature(T_g) at different coo- ling rates ranged between 1 and 20 K/min. Three phenomenological models of enthalpy relaxation, Tool-Narayanaswamy-Moynihan(TNM) model, Adam-Gibbs-Vogel(AGV) model and Gómez Ribelles(GR) model, were used to simulate the experimental data. The models’ parameters were obtained via a curve-fitting method. The results indicate that TNM and AGV models gave the almost identical prediction powers and can reproduce the curves of experimental C_p(T) very well. However, the prediction power of GR model evolved from configurational entropyapproach is not so good as those of TNM and AGV models. In particular, the metastable limit state parameter(δ) introduced by Gómez Ribelles has insignificant effect on the enthalpy relaxation of the small molecular hydrogen-bonding glass system.     

不同结晶度的乙二醇及其水溶液玻璃化转变与焓松弛

为了考察晶体成分对无定形成分玻璃化转变和结构松弛行为的影响,利用差示扫描量热法(DSC),结合低温显微技术,研究了乙二醇(EG)及其50％水溶液在不同结晶度时的玻璃化转变和焓松弛行为.采用等温结晶方法控制骤冷的部分结晶玻璃体中的晶体份额.DSC结果表明,对于部分结晶的EG,只有单一的玻璃化转变过程,而对于50％EG,当结晶度不同时,不同程度地表现出两次玻璃化转变（无定形相Ⅰ和无定形相Ⅱ）.相Ⅰ的玻璃化转变温度和完全无定形态的含水EG的玻璃化转变温度相一致;相Ⅱ的玻璃化转变温度要比此温度约高6 ℃.低温显微观察结果印证了DSC实验结果.DSC等温退火的实验和KWW(Kohlrausch-Williams-Watts)衰变函数分析结果表明,EG无定形和50％EG中的两种无定形有不同的焓松弛行为.     

The rigid amorphous fraction in semicrystalline macromolecules

The first experimental evidence of the existence of the rigid amorphous fraction (RAF) was reported by Menczel and Wunderlich for several semicrystalline polymers. It was observed that the hysteresis peak at the glass transition was absent when these polymers were heated much faster than they had previously been cooled. In the glass transition behavior of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET), the hysteresis peak gradually disappeared as the crystallinity increased. At the same time, it was noted that the ΔC _p of higher crystallinity PET samples was much smaller than could be expected on the basis of the crystallinity calculated from the heat of fusion. It was also observed that this behavior was not unique to PET only, but is characteristic of most semicrystalline polymers: the sum of the crystallinity calculated from the heat of fusion and the amorphous content calculated from the ΔC _p at the glass transition is much less than 100% (a typical difference is ~20–30%). This 20–30% difference was attributed to the existence of the “RAF”. The presence of the RAF also affected the unfreezing behavior of the “mobile (or traditional) amorphous fraction.” As a consequence, the phenomenon of the enthalpy relaxation diminished with increasing rigid amorphous content. It was suggested that the disappearance of the enthalpy relaxation was caused by the disappearance or drastic decrease of the time dependence of the glass transition. To check the validity of this suggestion, the glass transition had to be also measured on cooling in order to overlay it on the DSC curves measured on heating. However, before this overlaying work could be accomplished, the exact temperatures on cooling had to be determined since the temperature of the DSC instruments that time could not be calibrated on cooling using the usual low molecular weight standards due to the common phenomenon of supercooling. Therefore, a temperature calibration method needed to be developed for cooling DSC experiments utilizing high purity liquid crystals using the isotropic → nematic, the isotropic → cholesteric, and other liquid crystal → liquid crystal transitions. After the cooling calibration was accomplished, the cooling glass transition experiments indicated that the glass transition in semicrystalline polymers is not completely time independent, because its width depends on the ramp rate. However, it was shown that the time dependence is drastically reduced, and the midpoint of the glass transition seems to be constant which can explain the absence of the enthalpy relaxation. The work presented here has led to a number of studies showing the universality of the rigid amorphous phase for semicrystalline polymers as well as an ASTM standard for DSC cooling calibration.     

DSC法测定PS玻璃化温度的再研究

对Fevotte提出的由DSC曲线构建玻璃化温度谱图的方法进行了改进,将橡胶态含量为0.5时的温度定义为聚合物的Tghr.采用改进Fevotte方法重新研究了PS的玻璃-橡胶态转变,PS的Tghr值比半比热外推法结果Tghc高约4K,当考察热处理时间和降温速率对聚合物玻璃-橡胶态转变的影响规律时,改进方法得到的结果与理论分析更为一致.聚合物的Tghr受热历史影响,随热处理条件改变,通过对不同降温速率冷却后样品滞后焓数据的拟合,推测PS样品的Tghr在377.5～390.9K范围内变化.     

Hiking down the energy landscape: progress toward the Kauzmann temperature via vapor deposition

Physical vapor deposition was employed to prepare amorphous samples of indomethacin and 1,3,5-(tris)naphthylbenzene. By depositing onto substrates held somewhat below the glass transition temperature and varying the deposition rate from 15 to 0.2 nm/s, glasses with low enthalpies and exceptional kinetic stability were prepared. Glasses with fictive temperatures that are as much as 40 K lower than those prepared by cooling the liquid can be made by vapor deposition. As compared to an ordinary glass, the most stable vapor-deposited samples moved about 40% toward the bottom of the potential energy landscape for amorphous materials. These results support the hypothesis that enhanced surface mobility allows stable glass formation by vapor deposition. A comparison of the enthalpy content of vapor-deposited glasses with aged glasses was used to evaluate the difference between bulk and surface dynamics for indomethacin; the dynamics in the top few nanometers of the glass are about 7 orders of magnitude faster than those in the bulk at Tg - 20 K.     

The glass transition

This work deals with a comparison of data obtained from differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermally stimulated depolarization current (TSDC) investigations. Measurements were performed on various poly(ethylene terephthalate) films: a wholly amorphous, a thermally crystallized and drawn samples. For each specimen, the TSDC complex spectra, resolved into elementary ones, led to the determination of the classical compensation temperature (T _c ). The glass transition temperature (T _g) and the fictive equilibrium temperature (T _f) were determined by means of DSC. It appears thatT _c is different fromT _g and very close toT _f.     

Grinding of drugs with pharmaceutical excipients at cryogenic temperatures

The effect of cryogenic grinding on the piroxicam and its mixtures with polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) was studied by powder X-ray diffraction and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The crystallization of the amorphous piroxicam obtained during cryogrinding showed two events in a DSC curve (noticeable for pure piroxicam, and much more pronounced for the PVP-piroxicam mixtures). For the same measurement conditions, the intensity ratio of the peaks corresponding to the two events differed for the PVP-piroxicam mixtures of different drug-excipient ratios. The temperatures, at which these events were observed, increased with the increase in the PVP-concentration in the mixture. For the mixtures with a high relative content of PVP (≥60%), crystallization was not observed at all. Only one glass transition was revealed for the mixture containing 80% PVP suggesting that a molecular alloy was formed.     

Influence of heating and cooling rates on the glass transition temperature and the fragility parameter of sorbitol and fructose as measured by DSC

The glass transition temperatures of sorbitol and fructose were characterized by four points determined on DSC heating thermograms (onset, mid-point, peak and end-point), plus the limit fictive temperature. The variations of these temperature values, observed as functions of cooling and heating rates, were used to determine the fragility parameter, as defined by Angell [1] to characterize the temperature dependence of the dynamic behavior of glass-forming liquids in the temperature range above the glass transition. The apparent activation energy values, determined for the different temperatures studied, were similar for fructose and sorbitol. These values were compared to data obtained from other techniques, such as mechanical spectroscopy. The variations of the apparent activation values, observed in experiments involving cooling and heating at the same rate, slow cooling followed by rate-heating, or rate-cooling followed by fast heating, were explained by aging effects occurring during the heating step.     

The development of a quick method for amorphicity determination by isothermal microcalorimetry

This study presents a contribution in the development of a quick and accurate testing method for the determination of amorphous content using isothermal microcalorimetry. Examples demonstrated how the choice of the experimental conditions, especially sample load, temperature and humidity, influences the crystallization of the amorphous material. The suitability of this systematic approach was first tested on well-known lactose and afterwards on nifedipine as model compounds. It was shown that by proper method design and careful selection of experimental conditions, it is possible to achieve quick determination of the amorphous content in samples with a quantification limit of less than 1%, what is considerably better than by classical analytical methods such as DSC and XRPD. Our optimized microcalorimetry method gave also better results compared to previously reported literature data for nifedipine.     

Glass transition temperature and thermal decomposition of cellulose powder

Cellulose powder and cellulose pellets obtained by pressing the microcrystalline powder were studied using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), differential thermal analysis (DTA), and thermal gravimetry (TG). The TG method enabled the assessment of water content in the investigated samples. The glass phase transition in cellulose was studied using the DSC method, both in heating and cooling runs, in a wide temperature range from −100 to 180 °C. It is shown that the DSC cooling runs are more suitable for the glass phase transition visualisation than the heating runs. The discrepancy between glass phase transition temperature T _g found using DSC and predictions by Kaelbe’s approach are observed for “dry” (7 and 5.3% water content) cellulose. This could be explained by strong interactions between cellulose chains appearing when the water concentration decreases. The T _g measurements vs. moisture content may be used for cellulose crystallinity index determination.     

Thermally stimulated current and DSC studies of the broadened glass transition in liquid crystalline polymers

The high sensitivity of the thermally stimulated current, thermal sampling (TS) method is emphasized in a study of the breadth of the glass transition in several liquid-crystalline polymers (LCPs). Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was performed on all samples to further quantify the glass transition regions. For “random” copolyester LCPs with widely varying degrees of crystallinity, including highly amorphous samples, very broad glass tran-sition regions were observed. One semicrystalline alternating copolyester and a series of semicrystalline azomethine LCPs were studied as examples of structurally regular polymers. These exhibited relatively sharp glass transitions more comparable to ordinary isotropic amorphous or semicrystalline polymers. The broad glass transitions in the random copolyesters are attributed to structural heterogeneity of the chains. In one example of a moderate-crystallinity random copolyester LCP (Vectra), glass transitions ranging up to ca. 150°C in breadth were determined by the thermal sampling (TS) method and DSC. In other lower crystallinity copolyester LCPs, the main glass transition temperature as determined by DSC was comparable to that determined by TSC although cooperative relaxations of a minor fraction of the overall relaxing species were detected well below the main T_g, by the TS method and not by DSC. Rapid quenches from the isotropic melt to an isotropic glass were possible with one LCP. The anisotropic and isotropic glassy states for this LCP were found to have the same breadth of the glass transition as was determined by the TS method, although TSC and DSC show that T_g is shifted downward by ca. 15°C in the anisotropic glass as compared to the isotropic glass. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Hydrogen bonding effects in the glassy state of random copolyamides

The thermal behavior of random copolyamides which are used as model polymers with hydrogen bonds has been investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), x-ray diffraction, and infrared spectroscopy. The quenched copolyamides have only halo patterns in their x-ray diffraction photographs. A random copolymer of nylons 6, 66, and 610 (in a composition ratio of 3: 4: 3) was found to have 20% of unbonded amide groups immediately after quenching. When the sample was kept at the glass transition temperature (20°C), no change in x-ray diffraction was observed after the treatment. The free amide band in the infrared spectrum at 3450 cm^-1, however, was decreased in intensity by keeping the sample at the glass transition temperature. The transition peak height observed in a DSC curve also increased in the same experiment. Large glass transition peaks were found in DSC curves after annealing of the random copolyamides in the vicinity of the glass transition temperature. It is probable that the free amide groups in the amorphous chains were rearranged and formed new hydrogen bonds during the heat treatment at the glass transition temperature. Packing and restriction of the amorphous chains due to the increase in hydrogen bonding seemed to increase the height of the transition peak in a DSC curve. It is inferred from the above results that in the case of the random copolyamide, structures corresponding to a given enthalpy of the glassy state can be related to the number of hydrogen bonds.     

半晶聚对苯二甲酸乙二酯中的受限非晶相

当半晶聚对苯二甲酸乙二酯 (PET)的结晶度 (Xwc)处于一定范围内时 ,其物理老化后在差示扫描量热(DSC)曲线上的玻璃化转变区有吸热双峰出现 .通过对此吸热双峰分别与完全非晶试样和具有相当高Xwc 的半晶试样物理老化后在DSC曲线上出现的吸热单峰的比较 ,表明半晶PET中存在两种性质极为不同的非晶区 ,即自由非晶区和受限非晶区 .动态力学热分析 (DMTA)曲线上显示的损耗正切 (tanδ)双峰进一步证实了这两种不同非晶区的存在 .这两种不同非晶区的产生是由于试样中晶粒对非晶相中高分子链段活动性的不同限制作用所致 .研究发现 ,对于由冷结晶得到的半晶试样来说 ,出现两种不同非晶区所需的Xwc 上下限都随结晶温度 (Tc)的升高而增高 .还发现 ,在物理老化过程中 ,虽然非晶相的总量基本保持不变 ,但部分自由非晶区却逐渐转变为受限非晶区 .上述实验结果很好地符合Struik的“扩展玻璃化转变”模型 .