A Study on the Epitaxial Ordering Process of the Polycaprolactone on the Highly Oriented Polyethylene Substrate

Abstract

Studies on the influence of foreign surfaces on the crystallization of polymers have demonstrated that the lamellae of the epitaxial polymer in the contact layer could be several times thicker than those produced by bulk crystallization under the same condition. It is, however, not clear that how far of the polymer melt from the interface can be affected by the foreign surface and how this effect propagates from the interface into the polymer melt. Therefore, the molecular dynamics of PCL during its epitaxy on an oriented PE substrate was studied. The obtained results show that keeping the samples at temperatures above the bulk melting temperature but below the equilibrium melting point of PCL for a period of time leads to the formation of unusual ordered PCL, which melts at much higher temperature than its bulk crystallized counterpart. It was demonstrated that the ordering process propagates from the interface into the PCL melt. For a sufficient time, all of the PCL chains can be organized into the simi...