Linear polyethylene phase structure

Kitamaru, R. and Uorii, F. NMR Approach to the Phase Structure of Linear Polyethylene. 

The recent studies of the phase structure of linear polyethylene by refined NMR analyses are reviewed. The phase structure of the polymer in various crystalline forms, including bulk-crystals, solution-crystals and drawn fibers, is discussed in terms of different modes of molecular mobilities in a wide range of temperature. 

In the following chapters we will discuss the phase structure of linear polyethylene samples in the solid state by analyzing the broad-line proton NMR spectrum by a technique developed by Bergmann and Nawotki12-14), decomposing the spectrum into three parts broad, medium, and narrow components. We first therefore review the three-component analysis used in this series of work. 

In this article we have reviewed our recent work with NMR analysis on various kinds of linear polyethylene samples. It has become evident that the refined NMR analysis gives us much important information on the phase structure of samples in terms of molecular mobility, and establishes that there is no unified phase structure for polymer samples. The phase structure of samples varies over a very wide range, depending strongly on the sort of samples involved as well as on the mode of crystallization or the history of those samples. We should emphasize that there are significant differences in phase structure among the bulk-crystals, the solution-crystals, and the fiber samples, particularly in the conformation of molecular chains in the noncrystalline content. We should not confuse these phase structures with each other. The phase structures are evidently different, sample by sample, as their macroscopic properties also differ one from another. 

To elucidate the phase structure in detail it is necessary to characterize the molecular chain conformation and dynamics in each phase. However, it is rather difficult to obtain such molecular information, particularly of the noncrystalline component, because it is substantially amorphous. In early research in this field, broad-line H NMR analysis showed that linear polyethylene crystallized from the melt comprises three components with different molecular mobilities solid, liquid-like and intermediate molecular mobility [13-16]. The solid component was attributed to molecules in the crystalline region, the liquid component to... 

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