Flow-induced shish-kebab precursor structures in entangled polymer melts

Shear-Triggered Crystallization and Light Emission of a Thermally Stable Organic Supercooled Liquid

Thermodynamics drive crystalline organic molecules to be crystallized at temperatures below their melting point. Even though molecules can form supercooled liquids by rapid cooling, crystalline organic materials readily undergo a phase transformation to an energetically favorable crystalline phase upon subsequent heat treatment. Opposite to this general observation, here, we report molecular design of thermally stable supercooled liquid of diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP) derivatives and their intriguing shear-triggered crystallization with dramatic optical property changes. Molten DPP8, one of the DPP derivatives, remains as stable supercooled liquid without crystallization through subsequent thermal cycles. More interestingly, under shear conditions, this supercooled liquid DPP8 transforms to its crystal phase accompanied by a 25-fold increase in photoluminescence (PL) quantum efficiency and a color change. By systematic investigation on supercooled liquid formation of crystalline DPP derivatives and their correlation with chemical structures, we reveal that the origin of this thermally stable supercooled liquid is a subtle force balance between aromatic interactions among the core units and van der Waals interactions among the aliphatic side chains acting in opposite directions. Moreover, by applying shear force to a supercooled liquid DPP8 film at different temperatures, we demonstrated direct writing of fluorescent patterns and propagating fluorescence amplification, respectively. Shear-triggered crystallization of DPP8 is further achieved even by living cell attachment and spreading, demonstrating the high sensitivity of the shear-triggered crystallization which is about 6 orders of magnitude more sensitive than typical mechanochromism observed in organic materials.

An unusual transition from point-like to fibrillar crystals in injection-molded polyethylene articles induced by lightly cross-linking and melt penetration

Recently, an unusual transition from point-like to fibrillar crystals has been realized by lightly cross-linking structure and melt penetration.

Investigating the role of oriented nucleus in polymer shish-kebab crystal growth via phase-field method

The phase-field method has been developed to simulate the shish-kebab crystal growth in polymer crystallization by introducing the oriented nucleus. With the help of this developed phase-field model, the role of oriented nucleus in polymer shish-kebab crystal growth has been investigated. It appears that the growth mechanisms of shish-kebab crystal on a preformed oriented nucleus may be attributed to epitaxial growth and lattice match. First the oriented nucleus (early shish) further grows into stable shish entity through epitaxial growth, and then lattice match supplies the sites for kebabs and epitaxial lateral growth from these sites forms the kebabs. It also has been verified that kebabs can be grown on oriented nucleus in the total absence of any flow. Therefore, with regard to flow induced shish-kebab crystal, the oriented nucleus plays a major role in the growth of shish-kebab morphology and the flow mainly helps to generate the oriented nucleus. Besides, when the nucleus possesses a rod-like profile, the kebabs are generally parallel and equidistantly distributed, and the well-defined interval between adjacent kebabs is strongly influenced by the orientation angle of the rod-like nucleus. On the other hand, when the nucleus is slightly curved and presents a thread-like profile, the distribution of kebabs on the shish is no longer equidistant and the influence of orientation angle on the kebab density becomes weak.

Crystalline polyethylene nanofibers with the theoretical limit of Young's modulus

A highly crystalline polyethylene nanofiber is deflected by a cantilever under an atomic force microscope. The resulting approach and retract curves on both nanofiber and silicon substrate yield the Young's modulus of the nanofiber. The experiments show that the average Young's modulus of polyethylene nanofibers with diameters from 70 nm to 260 nm can be as high as 312 GPa.

Unusual hierarchical distribution of β-crystals and improved mechanical properties of injection-molded bars of isotactic polypropylene

Shish-kebab and β-cylindrite morphology were observed simultaneously in the GAIM iPP part, which showed greatly improved mechanical properties.

Critical formation conditions for β-form hybrid shish-kebab and its structural analysis

Critical formation conditions for β-form hybrid shish kebab and its unique condensed state structure.

Orienting semi-conducting π-conjugated polymers

The present review focuses on the recent progress made in thin film orientation of semi-conducting polymers with particular emphasis on methods using epitaxy and shear forces. The main results reported in this review deal with regioregular poly(3-alkylthiophene)s and poly(dialkylfluorenes). Correlations existing between processing conditions, macromolecular parameters and the resulting structures formed in thin films are underlined. It is shown that epitaxial orientation of semi-conducting polymers can generate a large palette of semi-crystalline and nanostructured morphologies by a subtle choice of the orienting substrates and growth conditions.

Polymer crystallization studies under processing-relevant conditions at the SAXS/WAXS DUBBLE beamline at the ESRF

Recent developments on the experimental infrastructure and the acquisition of new detectors on the Dutch–Belgian beamline BM26B at the ESRF offer novel and promising possibilities for synchrotron X-ray experiments in the field of polymer crystallization under processing-relevant conditions. In this contribution, some of the most recent experiments mimicking conditions similar to those relevant for the plastics processing industry are discussed. Simultaneous thermal analysis and wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS) experiments, at the millisecond time-frame level, on β-nucleated isotactic polypropylene (i-PP) samples subjected to ballistic cooling up to 230 K s−1, show that the efficiency of the nucleating agent can be suppressed when quenched cooling rates higher than 130 K s−1are used.In situWAXS experiments using small-scale industrial equipment during a real film blowing process reveal the dependence of the onset of crystallinity (the so-called freeze line) and the crystal orientation as a function of different take-up and blow-up ratios.In situsmall-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) experiments during high-flow fields reveal the formation of shish and kebab structures in i-PP as a function of the imposed stress. Quantitative analysis of i-PP flow-induced structures is presented. The beamline specifications required to obtain high quality and industrially relevant results are also briefly reported.