Image analysis of transmission electron micrographs of semicrystalline polymers: a comparison with X-ray scattering results

Image analysis of semi-crystalline polymer systems in reciprocal space allows quantitative measurement of characteristic periodicities of the material. This paper proposes numerical techniques for the computation of power spectral densities (PSD) and correlation functions, appropriate to this objective, along with a theoretical justification. These methods are applied to transmission electron micrographs of isotactic polypropylene (iPP) and poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET). Measured characteristic periodicities arise from electronic contrast between crystalline and stained amorphous phases. They correlate well with results obtained by small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) on non-stained samples.