Formation of bimodal crystal textures in polypropylene

Abstract

Electron microscopy, selected area electron diffraction, X-ray diffraction, and dynamic-mechanical testing have been used to study flow-crystallized and hot drawn isotactic polypropylene. As a result of these investigations, it was found that bimodal crystal textures can apparently be formed by at least two different treatments, but the corresponding morphologies are completely different. Flow-induced crystallization was observed to result in a microstructure of lamellae oriented perpendicular to the flow direction, while hot drawing of polypropylene films above a critical temperature produced a morphology of microfibrils lying parallel to the draw direction. Below this critical temperature, drawing produced a fibrillar morphology having only a typical unimodal fibre texture. As a result of information obtained here, a mechanism involving epitaxial deposition of chain segments onto growing lamellae is concluded to be responsible for formation of the bimodal crystal texture in flow-crystallized material.