Crystallization, recrystallization, and melting lines in syndiotactic polypropylene crystallized from quiescent melt and semicrystalline state due to stress-induced localized melting and recrystallization.

Crystalline lamellar thickness in syndiotactic polypropylene (sPP) during crystallization from either isothermal molten or stretching induced localized melt states and during subsequent heating was investigated by means of temperature dependent small-angle X-ray scattering techniques. Well-defined crystallization lines where the reciprocal lamellar thickness is linearly dependent on crystallization temperature were observed. Unlike in the case of polybutene-1 where stretching crystallization line was shifted to direction of much smaller lamellar thickness (Macromolecules 2013, 46, 7874), the stretching induced crystallization line for sPP deviates from its corresponding isothermal crystallization line only slightly. Such phenomenon could be attributed to the fact that both crystallization processes from quiescent melt and stress induced localized melt are mediated in a mesomorphic phase in sPP. Subsequent heating of sPP after crystallization revealed the same melting behavior in both systems for the two kinds of crystallites obtained from either quiescent melt or stretching induced localized melt. Both of them underwent melting and recrystallization when the lamellar thickness was smaller than a critical value and melting directly without changing in thickness when the lamellar thickness was larger than the critical value. The melting behavior in sPP systems can be understood by considering the chain relaxation ability within crystalline phase and also can be used as evidence that the crystallization from molten state and stress-induced crystallization passed through the intermediate phase before forming crystallites.