X-Ray Phase-Contrast Tomography for Quantitative Characterisation of Self-Healing Polymers

X-ray phase-contrast imaging and tomography add an additional dimension to conventional x-ray methods by exploiting the x-ray refraction effects in addition to x-ray absorption in forming an image. This greatly enhances the visibility of edges, voids and boundaries within a sample. It also makes it possible to characterise weakly x-ray absorbing samples which would produce little or no contrast in conventional x-ray imaging. Here we described the application of a laboratory-based x-ray phase-contrast microscope to x-ray micro-tomography of a self-healing polymer system and the quantitative analysis of the resulting three dimensional (3D) datasets to better understand the healing and ageing processes.