Melting behavior and non-isothermal crystallization kinetics of copolyamide 6/12

Abstract

Polymer crystallization obeys the laws of thermodynamics. Studying dynamic crystallization from melt to solid state may extend the general understanding of the crystallization behavior of polymers. In this work, non-isothermal crystallization kinetics of copolyamide 6/12 (CoPA6/12) with different copolymerization ratios were investigated by differential scanning calorimetry. Jeziorny modified Avrami equation, Ozawa equation and Liu-Mo's method were applied to analyze the non-isothermal crystallization kinetics of CoPA6/12. The crystallization activation energy was evaluated using both Kissinger and Friedman methods. Results show that the incorporation of ω-laurolactam into polyamide 6 (PA6) decreases crystallization rate and increases crystallization activation energy. The findings further indicate that the crystallization of polyamide is inhibited because copolymerization hinders the formation of PA6 crystal nuclei.