Polymer Engineering Faculty Research

Raman spectroscopy: a useful tool for characterizing the polymerization kinetics of polyurethanes

Mukerrem Cakmak

Abstract

In this study, the polymerization kinetics of an uncatalyzed polyester based thermoplastic polyurethane formulation was investigated with Raman spectroscopy. The normalized scattering intensity of the 1530 cm-1 diisocyanate band was used to calculate conversion as a function of time. Kinetic parameters obtained from these experiments correlated well with those obtained from analogous calorimetric experiments.