ESTIMATION OF SPHERE-SIZE DISTRIBUTIONS IN 2-PHASE POLYMERIC MATERIALS FROM TRANSMISSION ELECTRON-MICROSCOPY DATA

The blending of two immiscible polymer samples can lead to spherical inclusions of one component in a matrix of the other component. The mechanical solid-state properties as well as the flow behavior of the melt depend on the size of the spheres in the blend. For that reason, the sphere-size distribution is of major interest. Information about this distribution is often obtained by analyzing thin slices of the blend with transmission electron microscopy. In that way, however, the sphere-size distribution itself is not obtained. The reconstruction of the sphere-size distribution is introduced as a stereological problem, well known in fields as metallurgy, biology, geology, and medicine. It is shown that the sphere-size distribution can be reconstructed using a regularization method as implemented in the program FTIKREG. (C) 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.