Surface thermo-dynamic characterization of poly (Vinylidene chloride-co-acrylonitrile) (P(VDC-co-AN) using inverse-gas chromatography and investigation of visual traits using computer vision image processing algorithms

Abstract

The Inverse Gas Chromatography (IGC) technique has been employed for the surface thermo-dynamic characterization of the polymer Poly(vinylidene chloride-co-acrylonitrile) (P(VDC-co-AN) in its pure form. IGC attributes, such as London dispersive surface energy, Gibbs free energy, and Guttman Lewis acid-base parameters were analyzed for the polymer (P(VDC-co-AN). The London dispersive surface free energy was calculated using the Schultz and Dorris-Gray method. The maximum surface energy value of (P(VDC-co-AN) is found to be 29.93 mJ•m-2 and 24.15 mJ•m-2 in both methods respectively. In our analysis, it is observed that the values decline linearly with an increase in temperature. The Guttman-Lewis acid-base parameter Ka, Kb values were estimated to be 0.13 and 0.49. Additionally, the surface character S value and the correlation coefficient were estimated to be 3.77 and 0.98 respectively. After the thermo-dynamic surface characterization, the (P(VDC-co-AN) polymer overall surface character is found to be basic. The substantial results revealed that the (P(VDC-co-AN) polymer surface contains more basic sites than acidic sites and, hence, can closely associate in acidic media. Additionally, visual traits of the polymer (P(VDC-co-AN) were investigated by employing Computer Vision and Image Processing (CVIP) techniques on Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) images captured at resolutions x50, x200 and x500. Several visual traits, such as intricate patterns, surface morphology, texture/roughness, particle area distribution (DA), directionality (DP), mean average particle area (mavg) and mean average particle standard deviation (σavg), were investigated on the polymer's purest form. This collective study facilitates the researches to explore the pure form of the polymer Poly(vinylidene chloride-co-acrylonitrile) (P(VDC-co-AN) in both chemical and visual perspective.