Characterization of Crystallinity and Orientation in Poly-p-Phenylene Sulfide

Abstract We present a basic characterization methods and parameters for poly-p-phenylene sulfide (PPS) which are necessary to interpret experimental studies on fabricated parts. In particular (i) we determined the heat of crystallization of 100% crystalline PPS from density and DSC data, this allows the use of DSC to determine the percent crystallinity (ii) devised a method of calculation of crystalline orientation factors from Wide-Angle X-ray diffraction experiments. The latter problem is non-trivial because of WAXS peak overlap. The methods and parameters developed were applied to uniaxially stretched and annealed PPS films. (iii) We theoretically computed the intrinsic birefringence Δ° from first principles, this allows interpretation of birefringence data.