Treatment of SANS data from hot stretched polystyrene chains

The small-angle neutron scattering technique is applied to a hot stretched 5% perdeuterated polystyrene sample in order to investigate the residual macromolecular orientation at various length scales. The observed orientation is left over after fast quenching (in ice water) of the hot stretched sample. Previous investigations focused on how much polymer chains follow the external stretching. It is found that, even when macromolecules follow the external stretching affinely on the average, they do not deform uniformly. Moreover, over the time scale of the temperature quench, small chain portions relax more rapidly than large ones.