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Experimental and Data Fitting Guidelines for the Determination of Polymer Crystallization Kinetics

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Abstract

The crystallization kinetics of semicrystalline polymers is often studied with isothermal experiments and analyzed by fitting the data with analytical expressions of the Avrami and Lauritzen and Hoffman (LH) theories. To correctly carry out the analysis, precautions in both experiments and data fitting should be taken. Here, we systematically discussed the factors that influence the validity of the crystallization kinetics study. The basic concepts and fundamentals of the Avrami and LH theories were introduced at first. Then, experimental protocols were discussed in detail. To clarify the impact of various experimental parameters, selected common polymers, i.e., polypropylene and polylactide, were studied using various experimental techniques (i.e., differential scanning calorimetry and polarized light optical microscopy). Common mistakes were simulated under conditions when non-ideal experimental parameters were applied. Furthermore, from a practical point of view, we show how to fit the experimental data to the Avrami and the LH theories, using an Origin® App developed by us.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21922308 and 51820105005) and the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2017YFE0117800). We would also like to acknowledge the financial support from the BIODEST project; this project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 778092. The funding of MICINN (Spain) through grant PID2020-113045GB-C21 is gratefully acknowledged. G. L. is grateful to the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. Y201908). Mr. Ming Wang is thanked for preparing the AAO infiltrated sample. Dr. Maryam Safari is thanked for the fruitful discussions and data related to random copolymers, and Mr. Sam Fang and Dr. Easwar R. Iyer from OriginLab Corporation for their help transforming our plug-in (Ref. [9]) into an updated APP (Ref. [71]).

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  1. Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, CAS Key Laboratory of Engineering Plastics, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Ricardo Arpad Pérez-Camargo, Guo-Ming Liu & Du-Jin Wang

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Guo-Ming Liu & Du-Jin Wang

  3. POLYMAT and Department of Polymers and Advanced Materials: Physics, Chemistry and Technology, Faculty of Chemistry, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Donostia-San Sebastián, 20018, Spain

    Alejandro J. Müller

  4. Basque Foundation for Science, IKERBASQUE, Bilbao, 48013, Spain

    Alejandro J. Müller

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  1. Ricardo Arpad Pérez-Camargo
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  2. Guo-Ming Liu
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  3. Du-Jin Wang
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  4. Alejandro J. Müller
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Correspondence to Guo-Ming Liu.

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The authors declare no competing financial interest.

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Pérez-Camargo, R.A., Liu, GM., Wang, DJ. et al. Experimental and Data Fitting Guidelines for the Determination of Polymer Crystallization Kinetics. Chin J Polym Sci 40, 658–691 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10118-022-2724-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10118-022-2724-2

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