Dynamic light scattering (DLS) technique is a powerful tool to obtain a diffusion coefficient of colloidal particles in solution and to estimate the hydrodynamic radii of the particles from the diffusion coefficient. The method therefore has been extensively applied to study structure formation from solution, such as protein crystallization and also to polymer crystallization by Ding et al. In the present report, we apply the DLS technique to the growth of isotactic polystyrene (it-PS) crystals from dilute solution at high supercoolings, i.e. ΔT ~ 120 – 160K. We focus on the in-situ observation of both the growing crystals and the solute polymer molecules. We show their time development, and discuss the temperature dependences of the crystal growth rate and the induction time of crystallization in the early stage of growth.
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