Bernd Hinrichsen
BASF SE, Germany
Title: Crystal structures of polymers: Will PDF paves the way to greater understanding?
Biography
Biography: Bernd Hinrichsen
Abstract
Industrial polymers (plastics) are a fundamental part of modern society. The global production of polymers has been growing steadily from the tentative beginnings in the 1940s to 322 million tons in 2015. This immense and ubiquitous use of polymers has led to dramatic pollution issues and legislation curtailing use of environmentally detrimental polymers. Surprisingly little is known about the solid-state structure of these megaton products. Nuclear magnetic resonance studies elucidate the molecular structure in a liquid solution, transmission electron microscopy gives an inkling into the solid-state microstructure; however the chemistry involved in polymeric structures are only well characterized for a few examples by X-ray diffraction studies. Often these are performed on idealized samples, not necessarily representative of the real-life material. We will be presenting works that have been carried out and illustrate the potential which the PDF method brings to polymer research with special focus on challenging subjects such as bio-degradation.
