Journal
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS
Volume 112, Issue 23, Pages -Publisher
AMER PHYSICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.237801
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Funding
- National Program of China on Key Basic Research Project [2011CB606100]
- China Scholarship Council (CSC)
- Sino-German Center for Research Promotion
- German Science Foundation
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Crystallizable polymers often form multiple stacks of uniquely oriented lamellae, which have good registry despite being separated by amorphous fold surfaces. These correlations require multiple synchronized, yet unidentified, nucleation events. Here, we demonstrate that in thin films of isotactic polystyrene, the probability of generating correlated lamellae is controlled by the branched morphology of a single primary lamella. The nucleation density n(s) of secondary lamellae is found to be dependent on the width w of the branches of the primary lamella such that n(s) similar to w(-2). This relation is independent of molecular weight, crystallization temperature, and film thickness. We propose a nucleation mechanism based on the insertion of polymers into a branched primary lamellar crystal.
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