Secondary Crystallization of Isotactic Polystyrene

When isotactic polystyrene (i-PS) is crystallized from the melt or from the glassy state at rather large supercooling an additional melting peak appears on the curve during scanning in a differential calorimeter. The overall rate of crystallization deduced from the total peak areas as a function of crystallization time did not fit the Avrami equation well. When we omit the area of the additional melting peak in the kinetic analysis a much better fit is obtained. We also observed that no lamellar thickening occurs during isothermal crystallization. In view of the low degree of crystallinity of i-PS these results lead to the idea that a secondary crystallization process takes place within the amorphous parts of the spherulites resulting in this additional melting peak on the DSC curve. The large supercooling needed and the increase in peak area with increasing molecular weight make us suppose that intercrystalline links are probably responsible for the additional melting peak of bulk-crystallized i-PS. Electron microscopic studies of surface replicas of i-PS support this view