Crystallization and Melting Behavior in Polymer Blends

This chapter focuses on recent developments and progress related specifically to the crystallization and melting characteristics of polymer blends. It contains some basic aspects of crystallization kinetics, semicrystalline morphology, and melting behavior of miscible and immiscible polymer blends. It also includes important information from earlier books and articles and extends it to more recent achievements in this area. The addition of a second component to the pure polymer affects the crystallization and melting behavior of both polymer phases. These processes are complicated and influenced by parameters, such as the structures and molecular weights of both components, intermolecular interactions between them, blend compositions, equilibrium thermodynamics, and melt rheology. In the case of crystallizable/amorphous polymer blends, the amorphous component is rejected during crystallization of the crystallizable phase. In partially miscible polymer blends, two crystallization and demixing phenomena affect the phase transitions and the morphology, depending on the composition of the crystallizable component.