Fractionation of Polyolefin Elastomer by a Modified SSA Technique

As an important part of semicrystalline polymer materials, polyolefin elastomers are widely used, and the in-depth analysis of their molecular chain structure information is of great significance to promote their rapid development. We show in this work an effort in characterizing a commercial polyolefin elastomer of ethylene/1-octene copolymer by a modified successive self-nucleation and annealing (SSA) technique. A small amount of linear polyethylene was blended with the ethylene/1-octene copolymer serving as nucleation agent during SSA. It turned out that a tiny fraction of linear polyethylene can significantly promote the crystallization of the copolymer during cooling from different annealing temperatures and increase the melting temperature of the fractions so that providing apparent methylene sequence length much closer to the real value than obtained by traditional SSA technique.