Method of determining the kinetics of spherulite primary nucleation from the truncation of spherulites

Abstract

An attempt is made to describe mutual truncation between two coinciding spherulites. It is shown that if in a sample the borderlines between spherulites are not straight lines, the spherulites did not arise simultaneously. Using. a mathematical approach it is possible to determine the time distribution of primary nucleation from the shapes of truncated spherulites. This was done for polyoxymethylene samples at two different crystallization temperatures. The superiority of thermal over athermal type of nucleation depends on the crystallization temperature which lead to different spherulite size distributions.