Macromolecules 1991,24, 3906-3914
3906
Kinetics of Poly(ethy1ene oxide) Crystallization from Solution: Temperature and Molecular Weight Dependence Ni Dingt and Eric J. Amis' Department of Chemistry, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089-0482 Received October 24, 1989;Revised Manuscript Received February 4, 1991
ABSTRACT The rate of crystal growth from dilute solutions of poly(ethy1ene oxide) (PEO) of high and intermediatemolecular weight has been investigatedby utilizing a new seeding techniquein conjunction with dynamic light scattering. Crystallization of polymers in a dilute solution is initiated by the addition of seed crystale and the growth kineticsare monitored by repetitive measurements of diffusion coefficients of crystal particles. The crystalgrowth rate can be extractedfrom the linear plot of inverse decay constantof scattering particles vs time. It hae been found that the temperature influence on crystal growth kinetics in terms of log G VB 1/TAT depends on the choice of Tdo. Regardlees of the exact values of Tdo wed for the range of molecular weight samples, it is found that for high PEO molecular weights (>3 X 106) a transition could be recognized in the dependence of the growth rate on the extent of supercooling. No such transition is found for intermediate (
