I am working on to study the crystal behavior of Polypropylene and HDPE composite. For this I am using a Polarized light microscope. But I am not getting the spherulite structure. I need help of experts to prepare the samples for this study. These plastics are transparent. So what is the procedure to prepare the sample for this study. I tried by placing a small piece of polymer sample on glass slide and switched on the heating cycle up to 200 degree centigrade. Then followed the cooling cycle and tried to get the spherulite structure, but I am not getting the result. Is there any other convenient method for this ? Please help me.
classic paper
Wenig, W. & Meyer, K. Colloid & Polymer Sci (1980) 258: 1009. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01382395
Dear all,
I thinck you want to see the formation of spherulites formation from the melt. DSC is more suited to study the crystallization behavior of polyolefins. Regards
Two of our RG colleagues Zbigniew Bartczak & Mariano Pracella have published an article entitled " Spherulite nucleation in blends of isotactic polypropylene with high-density polyethylene" in 1986 & made it available as full text at Research Gate. The article is good & I hope that it will be advantageous to your research project.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/244299474_Spherulite_nucleation_in_blends_of_isotactic_polypropylene_with_high-density_polyethylene
When I was a postgraduate student at the University of Bradford (U.K) in 1978/1979, one of our dear teachers brought PP & HDPE. After we applied thermal treatment involving melting & careful cooling , "nice" spherulites formed & we took "black & white" photos of them with a Polaroid camera attached to the eyepiece of a polarized light microscope.
Hello Harek,
I agree with Nizar and your initially tested procedure on best and easy way to grow spherulites. Make shure that Polyethylene has not any nucleating agent that inhibit crystal growing. Also polyethylene by itself it has less crystal growing tendency that polypropylene so you have to be more carefull. Bests!
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