Role of epitaxy of nucleating agent (NA) in nucleation mechanism of polymers

The role of “epitaxy” of nucleating agent (NA) in nucleation mechanism of polymers was studied to formulate the nucleation rate (I) as a function of concentration of NA (CNA) in mixture of polymer and NA and lateral size of a NA crystal (aNA), I ∝ CNA/aNA. It is proved that the epitaxy of NA controls nucleation mechanism by confirming above formula experimentally by observing nucleation by means of optical microscopy. We also clarified that heterogeneous nucleation is a probabilistic phenomenon by confirming that “induction time of nucleation (τi)” did not depend on CNA. We established a method to obtain reliable I and τi by adding NA which has been a difficult problem in polymer science.