A new approach to characterize crystallinity by observing the mobility of plasma treated polymer surfaces

We describe in this paper a novel method to characterize crystallinity by observing the difference in chain mobility of oxygen plasma treated polymer surfaces, and further compare the crystallinity with the values obtained by X-ray diffractometry (XRD) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). We modified polymer surfaces with an inductively coupled plasma system to introduce polar functional groups. The immobility parameters of plasma modified surfaces were obtained by measuring contact angles as a function of storage time in air. Due to highly restricted chain mobility in the crystalline region, the crystallinity can be estimated by the fraction of immobile polar groups remaining after chain reorientation.