Nanofoam porosity by infrared spectroscopy

Infrared spectroscopy has been used to determine the porosity of polymer nanofoams produced from block copolymers of an aromatic polyimide with either poly(propylene oxide) or poly(α-methyl styrene). It is shown that, with an independent measurement of the film thickness, both the absorption bands and the interference fringes can yield an accurate measure of the void content. The results obtained are in quantitative agreement with density gradient methods. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.