A comparison study on the melt crystallization kinetics of long chain branched and linear isotactic polypropylenes

The isothermal and non-isothermal crystallization kinetics of LCBPP and linear-iPP was investigated by optical microscopy and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The optical microscopy results in the isothermal crystallization process show that the crystals of LCBPP grow slower than the crystals of the linear-iPP. This originates from the low chain mobility, or in other words, the lower chain diffusion rate of LCBPP due to the existence of long side chains. The DSC results in the isothermal crystallization process show that the LCBPP exhibits, however, a higher overall crystallization rate with respect to the linear-iPP. This is related to the higher nucleation ability of LCBPP since the isothermal crystallization process of both LCBPP and linear-iPP are nucleation-dominated. Avrami analysis indicates that the nucleation nature and crystal growth manner of LCBPP and linear-iPP are about the same. The analyses of the non-isothermal crystallization processes indicate an increment in crystallization rate with increasing cooling rate. But at any cooling rate, the linear-iPP crystallizes more quickly than the LCBPP. This implies that the non-isothermal crystallization processes of LCBPP and linear-iPP are diffusion-dominated, in which the lower chain diffusion rate of LCBPP results in the slower crystallization of it.