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Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2008, 47, 2590-2596
MATERIALS AND INTERFACES Crystallization Behaviors of Poly(ethylene 2,6-naphthalate) in the Presence of Liquid Crystalline Polymer Xia Gao,†,§ Ruigang Liu,*,‡ Jun Zhang,† and Jinghua Zhang§ CAS Key Laboratory of Engineering Plastics, Joint Laboratory of Polymer Science and Materials, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080, China, State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Joint Laboratory of Polymer Science and Materials, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100080 Beijing, China, and Beijing Centre of Physical and Chemical Analysis, Beijing Academy of Sciences and Technology, Beijing 100089, China
The crystallization behaviors and morphology of poly(ethylene 2,6-naphthalate) (PEN) in the presence of liquid crystalline polymer (LCP) Vectra RD501 have been studied by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), polarized optical microscopy (POM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and wide-angle X-ray diffraction (WAXD). It was found that the LCP in PEN/LCP blends accelerates the crystallization rate of PEN at both higher and low crystallization temperatures, which indicates that LCP acts as both nucleating agent and nucleation promoter for PEN crystallization. The crystallization of PEN was effectively improved with increasing LCP content up to 1 wt %, and then tended to level off with increasing LCP. The Avrami exponent n changed from 2.0-2.7 for pure PEN to
