Molecular fractionation in isotactic polypropylene during isothermal crystallization

The nucleation frequency of isotactic polypropylene shows for certain molecular weight distributions during isothermal crystallization a "stepwise" development of the nuclei as a function of time. The resulting curve can be fitted by a superposition of exponential functions assuming a separate nucleation density for each nucleation step. The multimodal nucleation is discussed as a consequence of molecular fractionation effects during crystallization.