Session G11 - Semicrystalline Polymers.
FOCUS session, Tuesday morning, March 19
104, Indiana Convention Center
The crystallization and melting behavior of homogeneous copolymers of ethylene with butene and hexene is studied by small angle light scattering (SALS). We show that the final melting temperature (T_m^f), which corresponds to equilibrium between a melt with an overall ethylene sequence concentration (equal to the mole fraction of crystallizable units) and the thickest lamellar crystals can be determined from the SALS melting measurements. The T_m^f values, determined from the temperature at which the SALS H_V or V_V invariant vanishes during the melting, are substantially higher (7 to 10 °C) than those obtained from small angle x-ray (SAXS), wide angle x-ray scattering (WAXS) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Thus our measurements indicate that SAXS, WAXS and DSC underestimate the lamellar thickness (l_f) of the largest crystals, a parameter necessary for estimating thermodynamic and kinetic parameters for ethylene copolymers. We also investigate T_m^f as a function of crystallization time (ranging from 1 hr to 72 hr) and heating rate. We discuss the implications of our SALS approach for estimating T_m^f, l_f and lamellar morphological parameters from x-ray scattering.