Size effect of nanostructured formations on scattering of optical phonons in poly(ethylene terephthalate)

The temperature dependence of the half-width of the infrared (IR) absorption band at a frequency of 971.5 cm^?1 in the spectra of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) is investigated for crystallized and amorphous PET samples in which the lengths of trans sequences are approximately equal to 4–7 and 2–3 nm, respectively. The observed increase in the half-width with increasing temperature is explained by inelastic scattering of phonons of stretching vibrations of the macromolecular skeleton by other phonons. The half-width of the band at 971.5 cm^?1 in the IR spectra of the amorphous polymer is approximately 1.5 times larger than that in the spectra of the crystallized polymer. This is associated with the violation of the wave-vector selection rules due to a small length of the trans sequences in the amorphous sample.