Crystallization and melting behaviors of polystyrene-b-poly(ethylene-co-butene) block copolymers

Non-isothermal and isothermal crystallization behaviors of polystyrene-b-poly(ethylene-co-butene) (PSt-b-PEB) block copolymers with different compositions and chain lengths were investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The results show that crystallization of PEB block is strongly dependent on the composition. Crystallization temperature (Tc), melting temperature (Tm) and fusion enthalpy (ΔHf) increase rapidly with PEB volume fraction (VE) for block copolymers with VE below 50%, but there is little change when PEB block becomes the major component. Glass transition temperature (Tg) of the PSt block and order–disorder transition temperature (TODT) of block copolymers also have a weak effect. The isothermal crystallization kinetics results show that Avrami exponent (n) was strongly dependent on the composition and crystallization temperature. For the block copolymers with VE below 38.7 vol%, the values of n vary between 0.9 and 1.3, indicating that crystallization is confined. For the PSt-b-PEB block copolymers with VE higher than 50%, fractionated crystallization behavior is usually observed. A two-step isothermal crystallization procedure is applied to these block copolymers. It is found that breakout crystallization occurs at higher Tc, but confined at lower Tc. Two overlapped melting peaks are observed for the block copolymers with fractionated crystallization behavior after two-step crystallization, and only the higher melting peak corresponding to breakout crystallization can be used to derive equilibrium melting temperature.