Effect of Rapid Compression on the Crystallization Behaviour of Polyethylene

Abstract

The crystallization behaviour of PE samples with different molecular weight was investigated through two different processes, concerning rapid compression (RC) and quench cooling (QC). The scanning electron micrographs, wide angle X-ray diffraction and Raman results showed that all the recovered samples were composed of spherulites. For the QC process, the effect of molecular weight on the spherulites morphologies was slight, but for the RC process, with increased molecular weight (MW), the growth rate as well as the final average diameter of the spherulites decreased remarkably. Additionally, for samples with the same MW, the mass fraction of the rigid amorphous phase of RC samples was lower. Furthermore, the crystallinity distributions in the longitudinal and latitude directions of the RC samples were both more uniform than those of the QC samples, implying that in the RC process, the pressure distribution was quite uniform and there was no pressure decay.