Investigation of structural changes in semi-crystalline polymers during deformation by synchrotron X-ray scattering

In-Situ Synchrotron X-ray Study on the Structure Variation of Morphology-Identified Injection-Molded β-Nucleated iPP under Tensile Deformation

The deformation behavior of semi-crystalline polymers is strongly dependent on the morphology formed during processing. In this study, in-situ synchrotron X-ray was firstly used to identify the morphological distributions of injection-molded isotactic polypropylene (iPP) with different concentrations of β-nucleating agent. It was found that under relatively high concentration of β-nucleating agent (i.e., ≥0.03 wt.%), the outer region (skin and shear region) of the iPP was dominated by mainly highly oriented α-phase as well as certain amount γ-phase, while the core region was rich in β-crystals with little if any orientation. The addition of the β-nucleating agent was beneficial for the formation of lamellae with large lamellar stacking distance in the shear layer. Then the synchrotron X-ray was applied to study the structure variation of those morphology-identified samples under tensile deformation. It was found that voids and cavities along the stretching direction existed in the deformed iPP samples and their volume increased with increasing concentration of β-nucleating agent. The increased volume of void and cavity was associated with the β to α phase transition, which mainly occurred at the core region. In addition, upon stretching crystalline fragmentation and rearrangement took place following the formation of thinner lamellae.