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New insight into lamellar branching of β-nucleated isotactic polypropylene upon melt-stretching: WAXD and SAXS study

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Abstract

Polymer processing generally plays a crucial role in determining the development of microstructure in the fabricated product. In this paper, isotactic polypropylene (iPP) containing 0.1 wt% β-nucleating agent was extruded via a slit die and immediately melt-stretched upon various stretching rates (SR) at the die exit. The microstructure of β-nucleated iPP samples was investigated using two-dimensional wide-angle X-ray diffraction and small-angle X-ray scatterings (2D-WAXD/SAXS) measurements. It is observed that, no matter what SR is, lamellar branching of β-form crystal is formed in melt-stretched samples, which is scarcely reported in open literatures. A method is proposed to calculate the crystallinity of daughter lamellae in β-crystal (X β−D). It is found that X β−D decreases with increasing SR, indicating that lamellar branching of β-form crystal is restrained by higher SR. Such case should be attributed to the denser-oriented structures (e.g., shish) induced by higher SR, leaving a confined space between adjacent-oriented structures for the growth of daughter lamellae.

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Acknowledgements

We express our great thanks to the National Science Foundation of China (51173171, 11172271, and 11172272), the Major State Basic Research Projects (2012CB025904), the Opening Project of the Key Laboratory of Polymer Processing Engineering, HASTIT and the Innovative Talent Troops Construction Projects of Henan Province (114200510018).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Key Laboratory of Material Processing and Mold of Ministry of Education, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, 450002, People’s Republic of China

    Zhongzhu Liu, Guoqiang Zheng, Kun Dai, Chuntai Liu & Changyu Shen

  2. Institute of Polymer Materials, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Martensstrasse 7, 91058, Erlangen, Germany

    Xianhu Liu

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  1. Zhongzhu Liu
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  2. Xianhu Liu
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  3. Guoqiang Zheng
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  4. Kun Dai
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  5. Chuntai Liu
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Correspondence to Guoqiang Zheng or Chuntai Liu.

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Liu, Z., Liu, X., Zheng, G. et al. New insight into lamellar branching of β-nucleated isotactic polypropylene upon melt-stretching: WAXD and SAXS study. J Mater Sci 50, 599–604 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-014-8618-0

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