posted on 2021-12-08, 07:29authored byBinghua Wang, Gang Wang, Shanshan He, Taicheng Sun, Jingbo Chen, Changyu Shen, Bin Zhang
The self-nucleation behavior of β-form
isotactic polypropylene
(β-iPP) crystals in ultrathin films has been probed by atomic
force microscopy (AFM) and optical microscopy (OM). The hexagonal
β-iPP single crystals can be obtained via a self-seeding method
at much higher crystallization temperatures (e.g., 156 °C). We
found that the average number nucleation density (N) of β-iPP lamellar crystals deceases with increasing self-nucleation
temperature (Ts) and heating rate (Vh). Upon heating the polymorphic structures
induced by shear flow to a temperature between 143 and 156 °C,
since α-iPP grows about 20–2400% faster than β-iPP,
the former overtakes and engulfs the growth front of the later when
crystallized for a sufficiently long time. However, the morphological
observations show that both α-iPP and β-iPP were grown
by homoepitaxy on their own crystals, and no trace of the epitaxial
overgrowth of α-iPP lamellae on the entire growth front of β-iPP
was observed, that is, a high-temperature βα growth transition
appears to be absent, which probably indicates that the free energy
barrier for secondary αα nucleation and ββ
nucleation is much lower than that of βα nucleation in
ultrathin films.