Comparison of crystallization behaviors of poly(epsilon-caprolactone) in confined environment with that in bulk

摘要

The spatial confinement of poly(epsilon-caprolactone) (PCL) in the matrix of PMMA was synthesized by in situ polymerization and characterized by WAXD and SEM. The nonisothermal crystallization behavior and the kinetics of PCL in PMMA/PCL (85/15) blend and pure PCL were investigated by means of DSC. Jeziorny and Ozawa's theoretical prediction methods were used to analyze the crystallization kinetics. The melting behavior after cooling was also studied. There was an additional interesting phenomenon of double-melting peak for pure PCL. Peaks at lower temperature shifted to lower temperature, and peaks at higher temperature did not shift with the increasing cooling rate. This behavior can be due to recrystallization. For the high-crystallization activity energy and low-crystallization rate, PCL in bulk would recrystallize during the melting process, and displayed a double-melting behavior. Under spatial confinement of the rigid PMMA, PCL had much lower crystallization activity energy and had only one melting peak. (C) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.