Extraction of Hydrogen-Atom Positions of Synthetic Polymers from the2-Dimensional Neutron Diffraction Pattern Taken by an Imaging Plate System

2-Dimensional wide-angle neutron diffraction patterns have been measured successfullyfor the uniaxially-oriented samples of fully-deuterated and fully-hydrogeneouspolyethylene by using BIX-3 imaging plate system installed at the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute.These data were analyzed in detail and the calculation of Fouriermaps allowed us to extract the positions of hydrogen atoms in the crystal latticeaccurately.The structural parameters obtained after refinement were compared withthose derived from the X-ray and electron diffraction experiments as well as thecomputer simulation result. The accurate determination of hydrogen atomic position byneutron technique makes it possible to perform the exact prediction of physicalproperties of polymer crystals in a quantitative manner.