Deformation Studies on Polymer Blends

in the LED blend the AFM image provided only the stmcture of the surface, and no information on the bulk could be obtained. However, the subsurface information could easily be collected by employing the STXM technique. 

Knowledge of the deformation micromechanisms of polymers is an important aspect of the fields of materials science and engineering. Indeed, precise investigations of the processes of deformation and fracture have contributed a great deal to the construction of materials with tailored properties [87-89]. 

The experiment performed to record the TEM images (as shown in Eigure 17.14) was a type of post-mortem study that could also be performed with the aid of TEM, using a stretched, semi-thin section (i.e., a few microns thick) of the polymer. This study revealed the deformation structures that were more correlated to 

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