Electron Diffraction Structure Analysis of the Amorphous Polytetrafluoroethylene Film

Abstract

A thin amorphous fluoroplast (polytetrafluoroethylene) film has been obtained and studied by methods of electron diffraction structure analysis. The previously developed method of constructing atomic radial distribution functions from electron diffraction patterns of amorphous structures, which is based on determining the normalization factor by varying the thermal parameter, was applied. The possibility of applying this technique is shown, and its necessary adaptation for the investigated polytetrafluoroethylene sample is performed with allowance for its not quite usual amorphous structure due to the rigid helical conformation of polymer chains …–CF₂–…, which does not allow us to speak about complete absence of the long-range order in the arrangement of atoms along the helix axis. Measurements were performed using the developed registration system on an EMR-102 electron diffractometer.