X-RAY MICROSCOPY of  ‘ TREE-RING’ LATEX PARTICLES

WHO:  Adam Hitchcock, Harald Stöver, Yew-Meng Hing, BIMR, McMaster
           Harald Ade, NCSU
 
WHERE:  Advanced Light Source  BL 7.0  Scanning Transmission X-ray Microscope (STXM)
 
WHEN:   23 Dec  1998                        POSTED:  18 Jan 1999
 
WHAT:  A focussed 50 nm beam of highly monochromatic and tunable X-rays is used to make an image of a slice of a latex sphere only 100 nm thick. By varying the X-ray energy the chemical species can be identified and quantified.  
Selective energy images of a structured latex particle prepared by a single step synthesis. The 'tree-ring' structure,which is detected only at 285 eV, is associated with variable composition arising from oscillations in the polymerization reaction of the mixed, styrene, chloro-styrene system. Difference in the absorption ON versus OFF rings is only 2%.
 
WANT FURTHER INFORMATION ? : CONTACT aph@mcmaster.ca