Photothermal deflection or 'mirage effect' spectroscopy was applied to the quantitative profiling of the optical absorbers in thin polymer films with depth dependent absorption coefficients. In addition, the mirage effect system instrumentation was designed and constructed. Improvements to the precision and accuracy of the instrumentation were implemented, which allowed for quantitative measurements of optical depth dependent layers to be profiled in samples consisting of thin polymer multilayered films. A theoretical model based on one-dimensional heat conduction was developed and used to analyze the experimental results. Further improvements were made to the model by applying diffraction theory to recover heat flux profiles. This added precision for the analysis was required for use in the inverse problem theory. The results from using this theoretical model were interpreted. The mirage effect technique was applied to the dynamic diffusion of solutions containing ionic species through a perfluorosulphonated ionomer membrane. The recovery of the heat flux profiles (solved using inverse problem theory) enabled the recovery of optical absorption profiles, and therefore, concentration profiles. A diffusion model (also developed in this work), enabled the diffusion coefficients of these species to be determined from the concentration profiles. By these means, the diffusion processes of species into the membrane were examined.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.29128 |
| Date | January 1995 |
| Creators | Schweitzer, Melodie A. (Melodie Ann) |
| Contributors | Power, J. F. (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Chemistry.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001473534, proquestno: NN08155, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
Page generated in 0.0023 seconds