Dr Gilles Régnier, ENSAM Art et Métiers Paris, PIMM Laboratory

“One year with GeniX Low Divergence and scatterless collimation at ENSAM: A versatile SWAXS system that gives us complete satisfaction”, says prof. G. Regnier from ENSAM Arts et Metiers ParisTech, lab of Process and Engineering in Mechanics and Materials.

The research activity of the lab is mainly devoted to forming, surface treatments and assembling of materials and structures; in particular, it is focused on the consequences of the defects and microstructural modifications induced by the process. This requires the study of the connection between microstructures and properties. This topic is now quite well documented in the case of metals but it remains an open question for polymers. The study of these connections, from the nanoscale (molecular dynamics) to the millimeter scale (homogenization), is an important activity of the laboratory. As a reason, the laboratory invested recently in a small and wide angle x-ray diffraction camera, in order to probe the nanoscale organization of polymer materials, in the range of 3.5Å up to 0.065µm, a perfect match to typical lamellar organization in bulk polymer.

Figure 1 represents a typical SAXS pattern of a microinjection moulded High Density Polyethylene. The polymer process transformation induces a very strong anisotropy of crystallization and potentially of mechanical behavior and macroscopic properties. Direction of flow is indicated by the arrow.

Figure 2 depicts the SAXS/ WAXS setup based on a GeniX Cu Low Divergence, the scatterless collimation and the 1.25m SAXS camera equipped with a Marresearch online image plate scanner.

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