Film formation analysis by diffusive wave spectroscopy

The thin layer analysis is very important for several sectors of industry. Indeed, environmental laws and improvement of performances lead the manufacturers to innovate in the field of coatings and paints. Several classical techniques of characterization (TGA, DMA, etc.) used with this intention do not allow to perform the analysis in situ and are often long and tedious to set up. We propose to solve this problem with a new optical process. Its technology based on multi-speckle diffusive wave spectroscopy (MS-DWS) allows making real-time analysis in a non-destructive way thanks to an optical measurement. The aim of this work is to highlight correlations between this new technology and the classical methods of analysis. Two film forming polymeric materials were studied, a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and a commercial paint based on an aqueous dispersion of acrylic copolymers. The PDMS was chosen for the simplicity of its film forming process and is used as model. The paint having a more complex drying mechanism enables to complete this study.