Effect of tacticity on the segmental dynamics of polypropylene melts investigated by 13C nuclear magnetic resonance

C-13 nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) T-1 and nuclear Overhauser effect measurements are reported for syndiotactic and isotactic polypropylene from their melting points to 525 K. These results indicate that the segmental dynamics of syndiotactic polypropylene are 1.7 times slower than for isotactic polypropylene at 500 K. Recent molecular dynamics computer simulations [Antoniadis, Samara, and Theodorou, Macromolecules 32, 8635 (1999)] predict this trend qualitatively but predict too large a dependence of dynamics upon tacticity. The contribution of normal mode relaxation to the decay of the C-H vector autocorrelation function is significantly larger for syndiotactic polypropylene than for either isotactic or atactic polypropylene. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.