(219b) Structure Property Relationship By ATR-FTIR or Focused Beam Reflectance Measurement (FBRM)

In today’s chemical product design, the use of enabling laboratory technologies can offer an edge in a highly competitive and scrutinized environment. The challenge is to ensure the discovery and validation of safe, effective, accessible and scalable chemical materials at a very early stage. Tools and techniques that provide a better understanding of the relationship between product structure and properties offer invaluable value to enhance the productivity of the research and development process as well as the quality of chemical products meeting our societal needs. Several case studies covering the preparation of bio-based material containing functional additives, polymer films and latexes for coating and surface protection, microencapsulated or coated particles for controlled release, will be presented. In each, structure–property relationships were investigated by ATR-FTIR, or in situ particle system characterization tools such as FBRM (Focused Beam Reflectance Measurement). The changing molecular structure of materials over time or during the various manufacturing or aging phases, as detected ATR-FTIR, provided knowledge about solvation, water uptake, polymer synthesis and curing, crystallinity, latex film formation, or surfactant migration rate. FBRM offers rapid characterization of the number and dimension of droplets and particles as they actually exist in the process. For example, with suspension polymerization or microencapsulation processes, the initial droplet distribution will relate directly to the size distribution of the final product. The product size distribution often relates directly to product performance and quality, so there is considerable value in producing product within a specified size distribution where demand and profits can be maximized with minimal separation and/or rework of the product. An example will be given where measurement of the process dynamics through real time particle monitoring was used to model, optimize, and control the critical processing steps in the preparation of microencapsulated materials products.