The analysis of polymer fibers by diffraction is often carried out using Laue camera and transmission images. The strong texture of the sample can be easily identified qualitatively by this method along with some informations about fiber spread and structure. Quantitative information is more difficult to get, as the material is not a single crystal nor can be approximated by a random or near random powder. With the appropriate tools and methodologies it is possible to analyze quantitatively fiber diffraction images and take advantage of the strong texture to obtain more information on the fiber structure. With this aim standard texture functions and microstructural models have been incorporated in a Rietveld like program to perform a Rietveld fit on this data. Fiber diffraction is collected on a standard Laue camera using an image plate detector in transmission. The camera is equipped with a fiber accessory to align the fibers normal to the x-ray beam. The collected images are transformed into spectra caked out from the center every 5 degrees or less (depending on the texture sharpness) and then analyzed by the Rietveld procedure to refine the fiber texture, the microstructure and the crystal structure. The entire analysis is performed in only one step through the software Maud. The methodology has been applied to industrial fibers of nylon-6, polypropylene obtained either by Bulk Continuous Filament (BCF) and Woven Nonwoven fabrics (WNW), proving to be successful in characterizing the polymers. The texture sharpness obtained by this method correlates very well with the mechanical properties and in addition some insights of the crystal structure have been obtained as well.

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1. Modeling crystallites and r.m.s. microstrain distributions with anisotropic broadening in the Rietveld method
2. Extracting single crystal like structure factors simultaneously with the texture analysis from powder diffraction