Journal of Advanced Chemical Engineering

Abstract

Banded Crystalline Spherulites in Polymers and Organic Compounds: Interior Lamellar Structures Correlating with Top-Surface Topology

Eamor M Woo, Graecia Lugito, Cheng-En Yang, Shi-Ming Chang and Li-Ting Lee

By using several different polymers and compounds, organics or inorganic, low-molecular-weight or highmolecular- weight, this study has proven that they can be packed into concentric ring bands, usually circular, but other shapes like hexagons or flower-like petals can also be possible. With these traits taken into consideration, it is difficult to generalize the ring bands in spherulites to a single cause of lamellae twist/spiral. Instead, exposure of lamellae underneath the top layers beyond thin films becomes essential for shedding new light on all these intricately complex issues. The novel approaches in this study circumvent such limitation by interior dissection of PEA, which clearly reveals that no continuous spiraling twist, as the cross sections show a corrugated-board structure with layers resembling a peel-able onion, where each radially oriented layer is sandwiched with a tangential layer of lamellae.