Isothermal crystallization of propylene-1-decene copolymers

The isothermal crystallization and subsequent melting behavior of one propylene homopolymer and three propylene-1-decene copolymers with different comonomer contents prepared by metallocene catalyst were studied using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). It is found that the Avrami exponent of the propylene copolymers decreases gradually with the increase of comonomer content, from 3.0 for the propylene homopolymer to 1.4 for the copolymer with 7.83 mol% 1-decene units. Higher comonomer content also weakens the dependence of crystallization rate constant and crystallization halftime on temperature. Double melting peaks, which correspond to α and γ crystal phases, respectively, are observed for all copolymers under isothermal crystallization. The result shows that higher crystallization temperature is favorable to the segregation of α and γ crystal phases, resulting in higher proportion of γ crystal phase. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.