Polymers | Measuring Intrinsic Viscosity for Optimized Plastic Processing

Determining the Intrinsic Viscosity (IV) of plastics is essential as it defines the properties of the material. During processing, the polymer structure can change resulting in an end product with different properties. The Lovis 2000 M helps you monitor these changes to ensure highest quality of your products.

Plastics and plastic properties

The term “plastics” describes a wide range of materials with well-known members such as PET, PBT, PVC and PA to name a few. Plastics are made of polymers which are macromolecules, consisting of repeat units of monomers. The type of monomer and the final size/chain length of the polymer will determine the properties of the material and therefore the type of application.

During processing the load can lead to structural changes of the polymers, mostly to a change of the chain length. Depending on the extend of structural change, the properties of the manufactured parts can differ significantly from the properties of the raw materials. In most cases this means that the manufactured product is not usable for the desired application anymore.

For many reasons monitoring the properties of polymers by determining certain quality parameters is essential in various fields such as research and development, polymer manufacturing, and processing:

  • Characterizing raw materials and end products
  • Optimizing chemical and physical properties
  • Planning polymerization plants
  • Defining process parameters
  • Quality control of raw materials and end products
  • Avoiding production of faulty batches

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