Thickness-dependent orientation structure in poly(ethylene oxide) multi-layer crystals

Poly(ethylene oxide) multi-layer crystals were obtained and the re-crystallization behavior was studied to give insight into how melt thickness and temperature affect the lamellar orientation. For a special re-crystallization temperature, there exists a critical transition thickness range for the occurrence of edge-on lamellar orientation. Below the critical thickness, only flat-on lamellae were observed. While above the critical thickness, both flat-on and edge-on lamellae were found and the proportion of the edge-on lamellae increases with thickness. At low re-crystallization temperatures (below 30 °C), the critical transition thickness gradually increases from about 15 nm to 35 nm when the re-crystallization temperature was increased from 20 °C to 30 °C. However, when the re-crystallization temperature is above 30 °C, the critical transition thickness becomes constant. Our results demonstrated that the lamellar orientation could be specially modified by changing the melt thickness and re-crystallization temperature.