The investigation of water diffusion into Teflon copolymer revealed by fiber-optic evanescent wave spectroscopy

Fiber-optic evanescent wave infrared spectroscopy was used for the study of water diffusion in Teflon and has provided valuable information about the structure of water in amorphous hydrophobic polymers. Timedependent absorption measurements were carried out in two spectral ranges: 3000-3800 cm^-1, associated with the O-H stretching mode, and 1620-1670 cm^-1, associated with the H-O-H bending mode of water. The results indicate that the IR spectra could be expressed as a superposition of spectra due to two species of water molecules: strongly and weakly hydrogen-bonded. We suggest that water molecules form clusters with strongly hydrogen-bonded molecules at the cores and with weakly hydrogen-bonded molecules at the external parts of the clusters. A mathematical model, based on a linear diffusion equation with a moving boundary, gave a ratio of 3.5 between the total number of molecules in a cluster and the number of water molecules at the core of the cluster.