Effects of molecular weight distribution on the flow-enhanced crystallization of poly(1-butene)

In this paper we analyze the crystallization kinetics under steady shear flow conditions of different samples obtained by blending two isotactic poly(1-butene)s with different average molecular weights. It is observed that the addition of a small amount of high molecular weight (MW) polymer (<6 wt %) to a low MW sample does not produce any appreciable effect upon the crystallization kinetics under both quiescent and shear flow conditions. When more elevated amounts of high MW polymer are added, only mild effects upon the crystallization kinetics, under both quiescent and shear conditions, are observed. This behavior can be attributed to constraint release of high MW chains due to the relaxation of the shorter chains. Such a physical phenomenon can be described by the double reptation theory, which, indeed, allows for good quantitative predictions of the experimental results by using the relaxation times of the two blend components as the only fitting parameters.