Investigating the Shock Properties of Polycarbonate*

Polycarbonate is an impact resistant optically transparent thermal plastic used in many engineering applications. The optical transparency and low-Z composition of the polymer chains which make up polycarbonate have made it a candidate window material for dynamic compression experiments. Specifically, experiments which uses x-rays to probe the lattice structure. The low-Z allows for high x-ray transmission and low x-ray scattering for performing x-ray diffraction experiments to measure the atomistic properties, and the optical transparency is suited for using optical probes to measure the bulk material response. We present measurements of the optical properties of polycarboante at 1550nm and 532nm, the two waves lengths used for velocity interferometery in shock wave experiments.