Experimental study of flow-induced crystallization in the blends of isotactic polypropylene and poly(ethylene-co-octene)

The crystallization behavior of the blends of isotactic polypropylene (iPP) and poly(ethylene-co-octene) (PEOc) under quiescent condition and shear flow were studied by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and rheology, respectively. The DSC curves of the iPP phase in the blends showed similar crystallization exothermic peaks to that of pure iPP itself, indicating that the addition of PEOc up to a percentage of 30 in weight almost had no influence on the crystallization behavior of iPP at quiescent condition. The rheological results of isothermal flow-induced crystallization (FIC) of iPP in the blends showed that the crystallization kinetics of iPP was enhanced with the increase of shear rate, similar to that of pure iPP, but the presence of PEOc enhanced the effect of shear on the crystallization kinetics of iPP significantly in the cases of shear rates larger than 0.2 s−1, which was due to that PEOc played an important role to promote the nucleation of iPP. The rheological results also implied that the characteristic relaxation times of blends were longer than that of pure iPP during the FIC process, indicating a different relaxation mechanism which might be related to the occurrence of interface relaxation and chain relaxation of the PEOc phase in the blends.