Estimation of polymer nucleation and growth rates by DSC overall crystallization rates

Isothermal crystallization of a polyoxymethylene copolymer in the temperature range of 423-429K (150-1561C) was performed using a differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) and data of crystalline development processed within the framework of a nucleation and growth model. Morphological investigations on DSC crystallized specimens were performed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and correlated to DSC data to obtain good estimations of spherulite growth rates in the explored temperature range. The accuracy of the growth rate has been enhanced by Hoffman regime analysis using reliable values of input parameters. Moreover, the function describing the number of growing spherulites as a function of time at constant temperature has been obtained. Polymer Journal advance online publication, 10 November 2010; doi:10.1038/pj.2010.111 Keywords: crystallization; differential scanning calorimetry; microscopy; microstructure; phase transformation kinetics; polymers