Insights into polymer crystallization and melting from fast scanning chip calorimetry

•Fast scanning chip calorimetry (FSC): A powerful tool for studying nucleation, crystallization and melting in polymers.•The amorphous melt and all intermediate stages of ordering can be frozen for detailed subsequent analysis.•FSC has opened the door to quantitative examinations of the melting kinetics of chain-folded polymer crystals.

Fast scanning chip calorimetry in its non-adiabatic version allows for heating and cooling at rates up to 106 K s−1, covering all polymer processing relevant rates. Furthermore it allows for systematic studies of nucleation, crystallization, melting and reorganization for a large number of polymers. After an introduction, open problems and the need for further investigation of polymer crystallization are explained, followed by a brief description of the novel technique of fast scanning chip calorimetry and its capability to shed further light on fundamental details of the polymer-crystallization process. In the fourth part, specific examples of non-isothermal and isothermal crystallization studies are provided, including the discussion of the effect of nucleating agents. The possibility to investigate homogeneous nucleation and its kinetics is highlighted too. The fifth part focuses on the analysis of the melting kinetics and the determination of the zero-entropy-production melting temperature.

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