.Polymeric thin films represent an emerging industrial area driven by their enormous technological and commercial potential in interdisciplinary sectors such as chemistry, material science, engineering, and physics. The large selection in terms of materials/composites and the wide range of technological solutions that could be used for their fabrication could create confusion for the final user requiring a quantitative characterization of their properties. This analysis could be even more complex in the case of functionalized polymeric films such as the samples reported in this work. Here we present how thin polymer films can be wholly characterized by applying a multiplicity of optical methods. Films were realized by a special liquid one-step process. Moreover, such polymer films were functionalized here for the first time by mesoporous silica nanoparticles. The nanoparticles were added to a polymeric matrix. We show that a full characterization was achieved by employing three different microscope techniques, i.e., scanning electron microscope, digital holography (DH), and space-time DH. Exploiting such a multimodal methodology can be of great benefit for characterizing the functionalized polymeric thin films. In fact, multiple characterization in different conditions was possible. The results reported in terms of morphological information, thickness distribution, three-dimensional (3D) mapping, large field of view, high magnification, and super resolution of the zoomed area offer a good solution for testing materials and obtaining a quantitative characterization and whole inspection in the case of complex polymeric samples.

The analysis of innovative materials and processes stands at the frontier of a series of wide-ranging scientific problems and poses stimulating challenges from a scientific as well as technological point of view, by virtue of its connection with various industrial sectors, such as aerospace and aeronautics. In recent years, composite materials have found numerous applications due to their mechanical characteristics and properties, representing the evolution of materials science and technologies by fusing within them the best characteristics of multiple materials. The present work is focused on the characterization of composite materials, using non-destructive techniques (NDT), to check different kinds of defects eventually present for a quality control of the object under observation. Shearography and thermography are used as nondestructive methods. The former, is an optical interferometric method for the detection of surface or sub-surface defects, the latter is a diagnostic technique that, by measuring the infrared radiation emitted by a body, allows to determine its surface temperature and to understand the health status of the investigated object. The results of the shearography technique, including, are complementary to thermographic techniques and allow us to have a complete characterization of the object. Their use offers advantages related to visualization and testing of end products, as well as the noncontact nature, nondestructive and areal working principle, rapid response, high sensitivity, resolution, and accuracy.

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