Stephan Woods

Microplastics from clothing, abrasive action on plastics, or engineered microbeads as found in some exfoliating cosmetics are showing up in many environmental systems. FT-IR microscopy is a useful tool in the analysis of microplastics, providing visual information, particle counts, and particle identification.

Adhesives are a group of materials that are found extensively in manufacturing and production industries and are of great interest for quality control and failure analysis. This paper discusses the use of an array detector in conjunction with ultrafast mapping to produce kinetic chemical imaging to monitor the curing process in a two-part epoxy resin. This technique allows for simultaneous analysis of both the kinetics of the epoxy reaction along with the spatial information of the reaction. This kinetico-spatial information gives insight about localized domains that form when the epoxy is mixed and how the reaction progresses.