Soft Condensed Matter— Polymers and Biomaterials

Soft condensed matter is a rapidly growing field that includes areas such as polymers, biopolymers and biological materials. In this chapter we describe some of the applications of INS spectroscopy in these areas. 

There is an enormous body of work on quasielastic neutron scattering from polymers [1,2]. There is a smaller literature on neutron vibrational spectroscopy of polymers but this has had a significant impact on the characterisation of these materials. Crystalline or semi-crystalline polymers are the most important class of polymers commercially. The most-studied and technologically most important of these is polyethylene and this will be considered in some depth and we will highlight the use of the n-alkanes as model compounds ( 10.1.2). We will then see how these concepts can be transferred to polypropylene ( 10.1.3), nylon ( 10.1.4), and conducting polymers ( 10.1.5). Non-crystalline polymers ( 10.2) have been much-less studied by INS. As examples, we will consider polydimethylsiloxane ( 10.2.1) and advanced composites ( 10.2.2). 

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