Epitaxial crystallization of olefin block copolymers (OBCs) on uniaxially oriented isotactic polypropylene and high-density polyethylene films

The epitaxial crystallization behavior of olefin block copolymers (OBCs) on uniaxially oriented isotactic polypropylene (iPP) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) films has been investigated by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The crystallizable blocks of the OBCs under investigation were epitaxially nucleated by both iPP and HDPE substrates and epitaxial growth of OBC lamellae was observed. Epitaxial crystallization of the OBCs has been found for slow and fast cooling conditions from the melt which pointed to the strong interaction between the polyolefin substrates and the OBCs. However, the epitaxial morphology of the OBCs strongly depends on their octene concentration difference (ΔC8) between crystallizable and non-crystallizable blocks, which probably is related to the OBC segregation strength in the melt. With high ΔC8 the development of epitaxial crystallization of the OBC was restricted within isolated crystalline domains surrounded by the amorphous phase. In contrast, with low ΔC8 the oriented lamellae of the OBC were distributed homogeneously on iPP but formed separated crystalline domains on HDPE, which has a stronger nucleation capability than iPP on the crystalline OBC blocks because of its similar molecular architecture. Our study points to epitaxy as another reason for the strong interaction between OBC and polyolefins which causes the advanced compatibilization behavior of OBCs when compared with conventional random copolymers.