The effect of self-nucleation on isothermal crystallization kinetics of poly(butylene succinate) (PBS) investigated by differential fast scanning calorimetry

Abstract

Differential fast scanning calorimetry (DFSC) was employed on the study of self-nucleation behavior of poly(butylene succinate) (PBS). The ultra-fast cooling ability of DFSC allows investigating the effect of self-nucleation on the isothermal crystallization kinetics over a wide temperature range. Crystallization half-time, instead of crystallization peak temperature, was used to describe the self-nucleation behavior, and the self-nucleation domain for the samples crystallized at different temperatures was determined. Due to the competition between homogenous nucleation and self-nuclei, the effect of self-nucleation was less pronounced at high supercooling than that for the sample isothermally crystallized at higher temperature. An efficiency scale to judge the efficiency of nucleating agents from the crystallization half-time was also introduced in this work.