Dry fracturing and cutting techniques for scanning electron microscopy of poly-vinyl chloride particles: application...

Two methods for examining the internal structure of poly-vinyl chloride (PVC) particles are described. Very small PVC particles, polymerized by the emulsion process, were mounted on an aluminium adhesive tape and pressed with a similar tape. Both tapes were then pulled apart so that the specimen was broken in two fractions, which were observed by scanning electron microscopy. On the other hand, bigger PVC particles manufactured by following the suspension polymerization process, were frozen and hand sectioned with a razor blade under liquid nitrogen vapor. The results were highly satisfactory. These methods were easy to implement, the cost of materials for sample preparation was negligible, and they offered the ability to obtain multiple information from a single sample.