Practical Considerations in the Multi-Technique Approach

Whereas several techniques may thus be used to study a certain characteristic of a polymer sample, for instance IR and Raman spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction as well as NMR may be used to determine or infer the crystallinity level of a sample, different techniques work differently and therefore usually do not measure the same. What this means is that crystallinity levels obtained from the same sample may differ when a different technique is applied, see, for example, ref. [23] and chapter 7 and references therein. However, these differences do not necessarily imply one technique being better than another. In fact these differences may contain useful information on the sample (see, for example, ref. [25]). 

This brings us to the point of considering the suitability of a technique with respect to a certain analysis, particularly from an industrialist s or contract laboratory viewpoint. This is a very important consideration, as this is not a priori straightforward. There are a number of factors influencing the choice. We will mention just a few of these in arbitrary order  

The chapters following in this book should, we hope, enable one to obtain an objective assessment and comparison of the most appropriate polymer molecular 

Ando and T. Asakura, Solid State NMR of Polymers, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1998. 

Chalmers and P.R. Griffiths (Eds.), Handbook of Vibrational Spectroscopy, Vol. 4, Wiley, Chichester, 2002. 

---