Fibre width measurement and quantification of filler size distribution in paper-based materials by SEM and image analysis

In this paper the development of image processing and analysis routines for acquiring information about the paper structure from images obtained by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is described. A new method to measure the fibre width based on the processing of superficial SEM observation is herein proposed and successfully applied to some commercial paper-based materials. The quantification of fillers in the Z-direction of paper was based on paper cross-sectional SEM images. The results obtained by image processing demonstrated the excellent performance and suitability of the proposed method to quantify exactly information concerning fraction and size distribution of digital fillers. The fraction of digital fillers was correlated with the surface roughness of a given paper grade.