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Visualization of Recrystallization Induced by Ultraviolet Degradation of a Polypropylene Film Using Raman Imaging.
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Raman imaging showed that ultraviolet light irradiation causes polypropylene films to undergo localized recrystallization, creating uneven microstructural changes across the plastic surface. Understanding how UV exposure alters plastic structure at the microscale is relevant to predicting how sunlight-driven weathering generates microplastics from larger plastic items in the environment.
Raman images were constructed for polypropylene (PP) films before and after ultraviolet (UV) irradiation (100 mW, 248-436 nm) for 10 h using several intensity ratios of Raman bands that are sensitive to crystallization of PP. In the images of PP films before the irradiation the intensity ratios are nearly uniform for the films but for those of the PP films after the irradiation, the ratios become large with a mottled pattern, indicating that recrystallization occurs in the PP films upon the irradiation of the UV light. The UV-irradiated PP films show worm-like shaped structures in few micrometer order representing the recrystallization of PP. The temperature gradient of PP is low (273 K), and thus, it is very likely that due to UV energy and polymer fragmentation, PP molecules become more mobile and some parts of molecular chains in amorphous parts of PP molecules lead to their rearrangement and recrystallization. In this study, we demonstrate that Raman imaging clearly detects subtle changes in the crystallinity with a micrometer order structure which morphological images cannot observe.
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