First inelastic neutron scattering studies on thin free standing polymer films

Glass transition studies in free standing polymer films have revealed values of the transition temperature, Tg, which were substantially reduced below the bulk for sufficiently thin films. Here we report on the preparation of two stacks of free standing polystyrene films: 70 films with a thickness of h ∼ 107 nm and 140 films with h ∼ 55 nm with equivalent total sample thicknesses of approximately 7.5 μm. We have performed the first measurements on such samples using inelastic neutron scattering, and demonstrate that inelastic neutron scattering experiments, performed on the time-of-flight spectrometer IN6 and the backscattering spectrometer IN16 at the Institut Laue-Langevin, are feasible. © EDP Sciences / Società Italiana di Fisica, / Springer-Verlag 2003.