Non-isothermal crystallization behavior of poly(vinylidene fluoride)/ethylene–vinyl acetate copolymer blends

Abstract

Non-isothermal crystallization behavior of poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) and ethylene–vinyl acetate (EVA) copolymer and their binary blends with different blending ratios were investigated by the use of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). With the increasing cooling rates, PVDF, EVA and their binary blends showed wide crystallization temperature range and high crystalline enthalpy. Jeziorny and Mo’s models were applied to calculate non-isothermal crystallization kinetics parameters of neat PVDF, EVA and their binary blends. By Jeziorny method, the crystallization process of neat PVDF, EVA and PVDF/EVA = 7/3 blend can be divided into two parts: primary and secondary crystallization processes. The Avrami exponent n 1 indicated that the primary crystallization process was a mixture model of three-dimensional and two-dimensional space extensions. In comparison, PVDF/EVA = 5/5 and PVDF/EVA = 3/7 blends showed a single crystallization process. Through Mo’s analysis, faster cooling rate was demanded to reach higher relative crystallinity. Crystallization rate coefficient (CRC) was used to describe the effect of crystallization rates on the interaction between PVDF and EVA. CRC reached a maximum value when the mass ratio of PVDF and EVA was 7/3. The maximum CRC values of PVDF system and EVA system were 98.1 and 179.9 h−1, respectively. The activation energy was closely related to the extent of conversion and the neat samples had a maximum value of crystallization activation energy. This was consistent with the observation for the parameters from Jeziorny analysis and could be correlated to the heterogeneous nucleation.