Polymer identification can be performed to determine the components of an unknown material, confirm the identity of a suspect material or to identify differences in “equivalent” polymers. An unknown polymer is often the underlying cause of many difficult problems involving plastics and polymers. The goal of polymer identification (PI) is to understand the composition of the major components in a polymer.
Polymer Testing Labs have developed considerable expertise in identifying and characterizing unknown plastics and polymeric materials using analytical testing techniques and expert interpretation of results.
We perform polymer testing and identification using tools such as FTIR and NMR spectroscopy or DSC thermal analysis to determine the chemical family and functional groups through library matching and fundamental spectral interpretation. We can also identify the elemental composition of the inorganic components in an unknown polymer using a SEM equipped with EDAX.
