FTIR of Siloxane & Silicone

It's Tech Tip Tuesday! 🤩 Today, I'm sharing with you a quick technique to detect silicone or siloxanes!

Very fast technique! Silicones & siloxanes have a very distinct IR fingerprint. It's nearly impossible not to miss. But if you aren't aware of why or what each frequency tells you, I share that knowledge in the slides below!

Anytime I see these bands, I'm 99.99% confident there is silicone in the material. Couple this with other techniques like MS, TGA, and Si-NMR, and you can start to get the full picture of what your silicone structure is. Super cool when you couple this with Si-NMR, C-NMR, and H-NMR, for silicone polyether (SPE), as you can start to see comb units and block patterns!