Morphology of polyethylene microfibrils and “shish kebabs”

Abstract

Abstract Gold decoration was applied to elucidate the morphology of annealed and unannealed oriented structures produced by shearing of polyethylene single crystals of known thicknesses, and the morphology of drawn and undrawn “shish kebabs” obtained by stirrer-induced crystallization. Distinct Au periodicities were observed perpendicular and parallel to the unannealed oriented structure, revealing distinctly the presence of microfibrils and an alternation of crystalline and noncrystalline regions within a given microfibril of which the periodicity is, however, found to be much larger than the corresponding original crystal thickness. Annealing resulted in fibrils being completely replaced by lamellae standing edgewise with the Au particles decorating directly on top of the edge but concentrated mainly on the folds leaving the crystalline region almost entirely void of gold. Deformation studies revealed an unusual ductility associated with the shish kebab structure, with the kebab splitting first, then di...