| Abstract
| - We report dynamic Monte Carlo simulations of polymer crystal nucleation initiated by prior spinodaldecomposition in polymer solutions. We observed that the kinetic phase diagrams of homogeneous crystalnucleation appear horizontal in the concentration region below their crossovers with the theoretical liquid−liquid spinodal. When the solution was quenched into the temperature beneath this horizontal boundary, thetime evolution of structure factors demonstrated the spinodal decomposition at the early stage of crystalnucleation. In comparison with the case without a prior liquid−liquid demixing, we found that the prior spinodal decomposition can regulate the nanoscale small polymer crystallites toward a larger population, moreuniform sizes, and a better spatial homogeneity, whereas chain folding in the crystallites seems little affected.
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