THE MORPHOLOGY OF POLY(VINYLIDENE FLUORIDE) CRYSTALLIZED FROM BLENDS OF POLY(VINYLIDENE FLUORIDE) AND POLY(ETHYL ACRYLATE)

A combined optical and electron microscopical study has been carried out of the crystallization habits Of poly (vinylidene fluoride) (PVF2) when it is crystallized from blends with noncrystallizable poly(ethyl acrylate) (PEA). The PVF2/PEA weight ratios were 0-5/99.5, 5/95, and 15/85. Isothermal crystallization upon cooling the blends from the single-phase liquid region was carried out in the range 135-155-degrees-C, in which the polymer crystallizes in the alpha-orthorhombic unit cell form. The 0.5/99.5 blend yielded multilayered and planar lamellar crystals. The lamellae formed at low undercoolings were lozenge shaped and bounded laterally by {110} faces. This habit is prototypical of the dendritic lateral habits exhibited by the crystals grown from the same blend at high undercoolings as well as by the constituent lamellae in the incipient spherulitic aggregates and banded spherulites that formed from the 5/95 and the 15/85 blends, respectively. In contrast with the planar crystals grown from the 0.5/99.5 blend, the formation of the aggregates grown from the 5/95 blend is governed by a conformationally complex motif of dendritic lamellar growth and proliferation. The development of these aggregates is characterized by the twisting of the orientation of lamellae about their preferential b-axis direction of growth, coupled with a fan-like splaying or spreading of lamellae about that axis. The radial growth in the banded spherulites formed from the 15/85 blend is governed by a radially periodic repetition of a similar lamellar twisting/fan-like spreading growth motif whose recurrence corresponds to the extinction band spacing. This motif differs in its fan-like splaying component from banding due to just a helicoidal twisting of lamellae about the radial direction. (C) 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.