Melting Behavior of Uni-Axially Deformed Polyethylenes Containing Comonomers as Studied by in-situ Small and Wide Angle X-ray Scattering

Structural rearrangements of uni-axially deformed polyethylenes containing 1-octene comonomer and HDPE upon heating were investigated by time-resolved small and wide angle X-ray scattering techniques. During heating, structural changes including crystal transformation and lamellar rearrangement noted were very different depending on the comonomer contents, At low comonomer content below 2 wt%, inverse martensitic transformation of crystal lattice from monoclinic to orthorhombic cell and the rearrangement of broken lamellar units into more ordered and perfect lamellar stacks were noted with the temperature increase. At high contents above 9.5 wt%, however, polyethylene copolymers showed neither the crystal transformation nor lamellar rearrangement that can be attributed to low crystallinity and high content of branch units.